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A TREATISE 


ON THE 


REIGN AND TIMES 

OF 

QUEEN CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


/ 

By JOHN BENSON BOSE, 


[For Private Circulation .] 


LONDON: 

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS. STAMFORD STREET, 

AND CHARING CROSS. 

1871. 

m * jj 


DCLil?^ 

.~F( T<?' 



O.Tn. , 

Tt ot>. 


PREFACE. 


? w 


“ Spare me for I am an old man! ” was the ejaculation of 
John Keble to John Duke Coleridge, on their last interview; 
when the latter expressed an expectation that the intercepted 
letters of Charles I. to his wife, which had been roused from 
their slumber of 200 years in the library of the House of 
Lords, might be found to justify the indictment of the king 
by the usurpers; but the regicides have not gained that 
posthumous justification. 

A similar feeling oppresses, and a similar appeal ad miseri- 
cordiam arises from me on reading the senior wranglers of 
history, who vaunt their party heroes by decrying their 
party antagonists. I feel fain to ask, is it indispensable 
towards vaunting the one, to decry the other side, and give 
verdicts which appear to be dead against the evidence ? 

In lusty youth I bathed with some senior-wrangler 
swimmers from a Portsmouth wherry, some of whom, I was 
informed, had dived under the ‘ Princess Charlotte,’ and our 
sport upon the wave was leap-frog. Leap-frog marine differs 
from leap-frog on land inasmuch as, instead of the back 
being leapt over, the back is thrust down under the leaper, 
and, so sunk, is swum over. Analogous to which methinks 
is the practice of historians who sink their antagonists, that 
their heroes may swim over them. In the small historical 
treatises which I have printed touching on the times of 
Queen Catherine de Medici, I have been led away, and have 
joined in the hue-and-cry against her. But seeking for the 
evidence upon which she is condemned I find none; and I 
desire to retract any expressions to her wrong, and to declare 
my conviction that we have been misled by party writers. 
Our Protestant cause needs no partizan views to uphold it. 


IV 


PREFACE. 


The following instances of the opinions of Henri IV. and 
of the Chancellor’s, Philip Hurault Cheverny, both perfectly 
good and well attested records, will justify another opinion 
of the character of that lady, and more in consonance with 
all the historic evidence of her life. 

Claud Groulard, a staunch follower of Henri IV., records 
a conversation with the King in 1599, when advocating the 
proposed marriage with Marie de Medici. He says that he 
instanced the case of the lance of Achilles, which wounded 
and which cured; and that, even so, the wound inflicted by 
Catherine might be cured by Marie. The king replied, 
“ Many have told me that already ; but I beseech you,” con¬ 
tinued he, “ what could a poor woman do, having her 
husband’s death and five little children on her arm, and with 
two families in France invading her crown, that is to say, ours 
and Guise, was it not necessary for her to use measures to 
deceive us and preserve as she did her children, who reigned 
successively by the wise conduct of so thoughtful a woman: 
I am astonished that she did so well.” And Cheverny— 
connected by blood to Michele Hurault Hospital, and by 
intermarriages with the historian De Thou, and the President 
Harley, and who was Chancellor to both Henri III. and 
Henri IV.—writes as follows: “ One can say of her without 
flattery that she was one of the most courageous, most 
prudent, and most capable of queens whom France ever 
possessed, exceedingly regretted by men of worth, grieved to 
lose her at a time she was so needed.” Cheverny attributes 
her death to grief at the murder of the Guises, and the ruin 
which her then only surviving son by that deed dragged upon 
his own head. Such testimonies ought to have shielded her 
fame ; but a foil was needed; and the easiest way to excuse 
the Huguenots for deeds which outdid the Catholics in 
cruelty, was to sink some victims—that the Bourbon kings 
might swim over them. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface .. .. .. .. .. .. .. iii 

Exordium on Victims .. .. .. .. .. 3 

1519. Birth (19th April), youth, and marriage of Catherine . 6 

1559. Her Widowhood, and the Medal or Coin of Rochelle, 

with the lance-head in effigy which killed her 

July 10. husband .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 9 

State of France, territorial and constitutional .. .. 11 

House of Lorraine-Guise .. .. .. .. .. 13 

House of Bourbon .. .. .. .. .. .. 14 

House of Valois .. .. .. .. .. 15 

Character of Queen Catherine as drawn by her Enemies 16 

Sensational Historians, and libellous History .. .. 18 

First Breach with Huguenots, and their Character .. 21 

1560. King Francis II. at Orleans, and his Death .. .. 24 

1561. Regency of Queen Catherine—Reformers—the Reli¬ 

gious Toleration of the Queen Regent .. .. 26 

Her Female Court .. .. .. .. .. .. 27 

Queen Jeanne of Navarre .. .. 27, 36, 39, 42 

King Antoine .. .. .. .. .. 27, 33 

Theological Dispute—Theodore de Beza and the Car¬ 
dinal of Lorraine .. .. .. .. .. 28 

The Triumvirate League .. .. .. .. .. 29 

First Civil War—The affair of Vassy .. .. .. 29 

1562. Antoine King of Navarre, joins the Triumvirate .. 30 

Position of Queen Catherine and Charles IX. .. .. 30 

Rebellious conduct of Huguenots .. .. .. 31 

Queen-Mother and King prisoners at Paris .. .. 32 

Death of King Antoine .. .. .. .. .. 33 

Battle of Dreux won by Guise—Death of the triumvir 

St. Andre .. .. .. .. .. .. 33 

1563. Feb. Assassination of Guise .. .. .. .. .. 34 

Coligni’s participation therein .. .. .. .. 34 

Prince of Conde (called Louis XIIL), his position .. 35 

The Bull of Rome—Pope Pius V. .. .. .. 35 






CONTENTS. 


1563, 


1564. 


1567. 

1568. 


1569. 

1570. 
1569. 


1571. 

1572. 


Feb. Queen Jeanne in Bearn .. 

State alliances no source of national strength, and delu¬ 
sive to the Queen-Mother 
Compact of Peronne of 1558 re-established 
Queen Catherine still favours Religious Toleration 
Her home proceedings 
Peace of Troyes with England, 11 April 
Duke of Nemours and his Marriage with the Dowager 
Dutchess of Guise 
Second Civil War .. 

Battle of St. Denis—Death of Montmorenci 
Peace of Longjumeau—Edict of Orleans re-established 
by Queen-Mother 

Collapsed and called La paix boiteuse .. 

Henri of Bourbon (Navarre) 

Four Armies of the Huguenots (200,000 men).. 

Queen Jeanne put under ban 
Battle of Jarnac, 13th March 
Death of Conde, shot on the field 

Queen Elizabeth of England aids the Rebels .. 
D’Andelot died, 27th May 
Battle of Moncontour 30th Sept. 

Peace of St. Germain: Huguenots appeased .. 

St. Bartholomew Anniversaries. 

Capture of Orthez and Pau by the Calvinists, and 
massacre of priests, population, women and children, 
and the capitulated Barons, on the 24th August, 1569 
That day never since forgotten by either side 
Remarks thereupon 

Queen Jeanne of Navarre and her proceedings 

Coligni executed in effigy by decree at Paris .. 

Count of Montgomery in fault 

Failure of Peace of St. Germain .. 

A year of comparative Peace . 

Marriage of Henri of Bourbon and Marguerite of Valois 
—Proceedings of Queen Jeanne .. .. 55 , 

The day of St. Bartholomew at Paris .. 

King Charles and Coligni 

The imperious position of Coligni and the Huguenots *. 
The offensive presence there of Montgomery 


PAGE 

36 

37 

37 

38 

39 
39 

39 

40 

40 

41 
41 

43 

44 

44 

45 

45 

46 
46 
46 
46 


47 

47 

48 

50 

51 

52 

53 

54 

-58 

59 

60 
60 
61 



CONTENTS. 


1572. Smitten in the face by young Tavannes, and his remarks 
thereupon 

22 Aug. Turenne’s recital of the wounding of Coligni .. 

King Charles ejaculates for “ rest and some grace ” 
Huguenots, 400 strong, enter the Louvre 
The Queen-Mother orders the drawbridge to be lowered 
to all comers, but she sheds tears 
She visited the wounded Coligni 
Coligni still imperatively demands War with Spain 
Conflicting testimonies of Anjou, Marguerite, and 
young Tavannes 
No Circular Letters in existence 
Supposititious, of the Viscount of Orthey 
Real Letters from King Charles 

23 Aug. Day of inaction 

Visit of the Queen-mother to Coligni .. 

Why the Assassination was postponed for twenty-four 
hours, namely, to catch the 24th August 

24 Aug. Queen Marguerite’s testimony 

Sully’s testimony .. 

Duplessis Mornay’s testimony 
Turennes’ testimony 
De Mergey’s testimony 
Brantome’s testimony 
Tavannes’s testimony 
Montluc’s testimony 
St. Auban’s testimony 
Private revenge and remarks 
Coligni, not mutilated, but executed in efBgy so late as 
29th October, pursuant to decree 
Ridiculous reports grown current 
25th, Monday. The streets were cleared, and the King, Queen 
Mother, and Anjou drove through Paris 
26 Aug. King went to mass 

General concurrence of Parisians 
Letters to the Provinces To Burgundy 
. „ ToBourges.. 

Evidence of Jean Philippe from Montpelier 
„ of D’Achille Gamon from Annonai 
28th. Royal Edict commanding peace 


vii 

PAGE 

61 

61 

62 

63 

63 

63 

64 

64 

65 
65 
65 
65 

65 

66 

69 

70 

72 

73 

74 
77 

79 

80 
82 
83 

85 

87 

87 

87 

87 

88 

89 

89 

90 








viii 


CONTENTS. 


1572. 


1573. 


1574. 


1576. 


1578. 


1581. 

1584. 


1585. 


1586. 

1587. 


1588. 


Massacre in the towns of Meaux, Orleans, Rouen, and 
Lyons 

Summary of numbers, and exaggerations 
Like exaggerations in the Flemish contemporary 
slaughter 

Omission of contemporary notice in England .. 

24 Aug. Huguenots arise unscathed 

Absurdities of History and libels of historians 
The unconsolidated state of France 
No general immorality in France, only with the kings 
and royal house .. .. .. .. .. 

Henri III. and Crown of Poland 
The Rebels defeated 
King Charles dies, 30th May 
Entry of Henri III. 

Navarre and Alemjon rebel 
“ Monsieur’s Peace,” 14th May 
Rise of the League 

Proceedings of Henri of Navarre . 

Escape of Anjou (14th Feb.) to Mons .. 

Henri III. repudiates his proceedings .. 

Queen-Mother exerts herself 
Remarks on Henri and his Queen Marguerite 
Guerre des Amoureux 
Death of Anjou—Rioting in streets 
Remarks on Salique Law 
The Bourbons stand as successors to the Valois 
Henri III.—Valois tries to win Henri Bourbon to the 
side of the Catholics .. 

Henri III. falls into puerilities .. .. .. J 16 

Futile Treaty of Nemours, 7 th July 
Queen-Mother fails in health .. 

Epernon and Joyeuse, the favourites 
Dangerous position of Navarre and Conde' 

Decapitation of Mary Queen of Scots .. .. ” 

Henri Bourbon wins Coutras, and loses the opportunity 
by dalliance with the Countess of Grammont 
Guise routs the German reiters 
Conde dies .. 

Guise enters Paris in a popular ovation .. 


PAGE 

91 

92 

93 

94 

94 

95 
98 

100 

101 

104 

105 
107 

107 

108 
109 

109 

110 
110 
110 
111 

113 

114 

115 
115 

115 
-118 

116 
116 
116 
117 

117 

118 
118 
118 
118 


CONTENTS. 


IX 


PAGE 

1588. His escapes from assassination through the manage¬ 

ment of the Queen-Mother .. .. .. .. 119 

His demands for reform .. .. .. .. .. 119 

Barricades—Noble conduct of the Queen-Mother .. 119 

Henri III. flies from Paris .. .. .. .. 120 

Guise, d’Aumale, and the Dutchess of Montpensier, 
their sister, rule in Paris .. .. .. .. 120 

Peace and contentment in Paris .. .. .. .. 120 

The Queen-Mother and the Dutchess of Montpensier 
settle the Edict of Union .. .. .. .. 121 

Spanish Armada floating by, and Mendoza applauded 
the edict .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 122 

Assassination of Guise and the Cardinal of Blois, 

23rd December .. .123 

1589. Death of the Queen-Mother, 5th January .. .. 124 

Murder of Henri III. by Clement .. .. .. 125 

Prognostic of Henri IV. .. .. .. .. .. 126 

Sully—Scenes with Henri IV., his Mistresses, &c. .. 129 

Madame de Sauve—remarks upon .. .. .. 133 

Madame du Chateauneuf—remarks upon .. ,. 133 

Sully—Anecdotes of himself by his own hand .. .. 136 

„ He visits King James .. .. .. .. 137 

„ His “Castle in the air” with King James .. 139 

„ Its moral .. .. .. .142 

1611. War under the Sullyites .. .. .. .. .. 143 

Death of Henri IV., 17th May, 1611.143 

Marie de Medici Queen Regent .. .. .. .. 145 

The injunctions left by Henri IV. .. .. .. 146 

The intermarriages with the Lorraines .. .. .. 146 

Flight and fear of Sully .. .. .. •• •• HO 

The Henri IV. Ministry side with Conchini and Soissons 
instantly .. .. .. •• • • • • •• 148 

Conde entered Paris with 1500 horse .. .. .. 150 

Sully meets and joins him .. .. .. .. 150 

Henri IV.’s kingdom reverted to its elements .. .. 151 

Queen Marie, pursuant to her husband’s bequest, seeks 
the Church party .. . • • • • • • • 152 

1614. Vendome revolts.152 

Conde issues his defiance and terms .. .. .. 152 

Wins them—Treaty of St. Menehould.153 

B 









X 


CONTENTS. 


PAOE 

1614. Louis XIII. declared Majeur .153 

1616. Another Revolt, and Peace of Loudon .. .. .. 154 

1617. Murder of Conchini by the King .. .. .. 154 

And of Leonora, the Queen’s foster-sister, by the popular 

outcry .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 154 

Richelieu arises .. .. .. .. .. .. 155 

Rochelle and the Huguenots, and remarks thereupon 
and Edict of Nantes .. .. .. .. .. 155 

Queen Marguerite of France and Navarre .. .. 157 

She dies, 27th March, 1615 .. .. .. .. 163 

Mary Queen of Scots .. .. .. .. .. 163 

Catherine of Lorraine, Dutchess of Montpensier .. 167 

Salique Law, and Law of Marriage .. .. .. 168 

Small legal power inherent to the Crown in France .. 169 

Instances of marriages of minors .. .. .. 169 

Cruelty of the punishments by law, and murders effected 
by legal sanction .. .. .. .. .. 171 

Sorcery and Witchcraft .. .. .. .. .. 173 

De Thou deeply implicated .. .. .. .. 174 

Astrology .. .. .177 

-Cruelties traced to Protestants more than to Catholics 178 
Savage nature of Parisian populace .. .. .. 178 

Hydrophobia .. .. .. .. .. .. 179 

Cards at first connected with sorcery .. .. .. 180 

Instances of regal and noble amusements .. 183 

Cards — Henri IV. at the Arsenal .. .. .. 185 

Parallels of persons .. .. .. .. .. 189 

De Beze and Buchanan .. .. .. .. .. 190 

L’Etoile and Evelyn .. .. .. .. .. 191 

Beaumont’s “ Maid’s Tragedy ” .. .. .. .. 193 

Rochelle .. . ». .. 194 

Intolerance in France and England .. .. .. 195 

Sully’s benefices .. .. .. .. .. .. 196 

Conclusion.194 

Appendix—Coins and Mottoes .. .. .. .. .. 202 





CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


“ Hence triumphant, lead me hence, 

Casters of proud Ilion down— 

Wreathe me, crown me, your defence— 

Lo! my tresses, crown them crown.” 

Ipliigeneia at Aulis. 

If you have tears prepare to shed them now. I am about 
(by command) to write the history of the Niobe of Queens, 
Catherine de Medici, and of her fellow orphans, queens and 
victims, her daughter-in-law, Mary Stewart, Queen Dowager 
of France and Queen of Scots; and her daughter Marguerite 
Queen of France and of Navarre. 

Surely there is some deep innate principle in the mortal 
heart and soul demanding victims; some atoning sacrifice, 
some oblation to bear away the sins of the age, and surely in 
the choice the fairest and the best are selected, those nearest 
without a blot; and the Hebrew law and ordinance is but 
the reflex of the soul of man, holding as a mirror to his 
outward gaze the spiritual cravings of his soul. 

I do not adduce the offering of our Saviour or of its pre¬ 
figuration in that of Isaac, nor will I adduce the scape-goat 
of our schoolmasters, the Hebrews; I shall adduce my 
instances from the heathen, for it is a heathen principle 
within one which demands the sacrifice, and not a sacred one. 
We have two instances recorded in Holy Writ: that of the 

b 2 




4 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Shepherd Mesha, King of the Moabites, who offered his 
eldest son a burnt sacrifice upon the mound—the fruit of 
his body for the sin of his soul; and the other that of Jephtha, 
Judge of Israel, who devoted his daughter, the story of 
which is familiar to us all. Not so familiar is the Arcadian 
rite of the Preselenites, men prior to the moon, who de¬ 
manded a virgin of the race of iEpytus * for their atoning 
sacrifice; and travelling thence through the history of the 
heathen, we find the Atreidan brothers offering Iphigeneia, 
whose triumphant song heads this opening chapter; to be fol¬ 
lowed quickly by the like sacrifice of Polyxena, the first to the 
Winds of Thrace, the second to the shade of Achilles. These 
devolved into sacrifices of men and flagellations of the body, 
in expiations, until they settled into a system of sanctuary 
for men and expiatory sacrifice of animals. The names of 
the goddess Kali in the East, and of the god Odin in the 
West, spread from the rising to the setting sun the idolatry, 
in its hideous aspect, which we trace alike to old Etruria 
and the realms of Mexico and Peru in the newly discovered 
world. Amidst the heathen it was a principle open and 
avowed, and the question is, are we Christians free and void 
of it—not in auto-da-fes and Smithfield fires, but in the hidden 
recesses of the soul ? Methinks it is to be traced and recog¬ 
nised in every phase of life; from him who, carelessly 
walking, trips, and turns to find something to upbraid—a 
curb-stone or orange-peel—to those who condemn their leaders 
for the lost battle, and unto those who seek one historic 
name to bear the burden of his fellow man, and to be held up 
to future times as the cause of the effect which they deplore. 

The Roman satirist wrote— 

“We pardon the crows, but we bully the doves.” 

My story will tell of long flights of Henrys—crows of the 
deepest dye; they might have had without disparage Old 

* Query, Japhet. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


5 


Harry to their sire—Harry the Eighth of England, Henry 
the Second, Third, and Fourth of France, Henry Darnley, 
and Henri of Guise, all have their historians and special 
pleaders to excuse, to extenuate, to pity their faults. “ We 
pardon the ravens,” hut when we find the orphan girls 
betrayed to wedlock with unworthy men, their happiness 
sacrificed in their girlhood, childhood, by those having 
authority over them—and though they were pure amidst 
impurity, and self controlling amidst conflicting sects and 
political parties—yet nevertheless—victims are needed to 
lessen the load of calumny—therefore “bully the doves.” 
Such, without further preamble, is the story I have to relate: 
I here avouch my heroine victims to have been as faultless as 
it was feasible to have been in so turmoiled and vile a world, 
when men resigned their duties “ to foin of nights and fight 
of days,” and left the task of righting the wrongs they did 
to the women of their races, for the women of that day 
appear to have been supreme ;— it was in appearance, pro¬ 
bably, and because the men had vacated their posts of duty. 
The time dates from 1547 to 1589, from the death of Francis I. 
to the death of Henri III., a period of about forty-two years, 
in which space we find a queen regent in Scotland, a queen 
regnant in England, a queen regent in France, a Queen of 
Scots, a Queen of Navarre, a Queen of France and Navarre, 
a Duchess of Parma ruling in Flanders, a queen regent in 
Portugal, Catherine of Guise, Duchess of Montpensier, and 
an Anne of Este, Duchess of Nemours, a galaxy of women 
who ruled and governed whilst the Henrys played the fool 
with passions almost uncontrolled; and prior to this period 
the Peace of Cambrai had been negotiated by Louisa of Savoie, 
mother of Francis I. and Marguerite of Austria, in 1529, and 
was called “ La paix des Dames.” 

The three queens who are to grace my treatise with their 
feminine sweetness, beauty, and misfortunes were all orphan 


6 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


girls—losing their fathers in earliest youth. Catherine was 
orphaned of both father and mother ; Mary was orphaned of 
her father, and separated from Mary of Guise her mother; and 
Marguerite was the sole of the three who had the blessing of 
a maternal roof in her childish days, yet wanting a father. 

Catherina Maria de Medici was born at Florence, 13th 
April, 1519, and was orphaned of her mother upon the 28th, 
and of her father on the 4th May following. She was the 
heiress of the house, and was called the Duchessina. At five 
months of age she was hurried away from Florence to Rome, 
in a litter, in sufficient state, but in captivity. Leo X. was 
the magnificent Pontiff filling the chair of St. Peter, and 
claiming the guardianship of the orphan child as great-uncle. 
Charles Y. inherited the crown of Spain, and had been elected 
to that of the German empire; Francis I. was king of France, 
and Henry VIII. of England. Leo died 1st December, 1521, 
and was succeeded by Adrian VI., who died 23rd Septem¬ 
ber, 1523, and was succeeded by Clement VII., Cardinal de 
Medici, who thus became the guardian of his orphan niece 
19th November, 1523. In 1524, when she was six years of 
age, she was sent back to Florence. She had an aunt, Clarice, 
wedded to Philippo Strozzi, a banker; but it was not the lot 
of the orphan to have kindred kindness in her infant years. 
She inhabited her own palace in the Via Larga, which Ippolito 
and Alessandro, illegitimate branches of her house, after the 
custom of those days, shared with her. 

On January 31, 1527, at the age of eight, her infant ears 
were affrighted with the tidings of the raid of the Constable 
Bourbon over the Alps and the horrible sack of Rome. 
Clement saved himself in Adrian’s Mausoleum, the Castle of 
San Angelo. On the 18th May the Lady Clarice refuged, 
with her infant niece, Catherine, in the convent Santa 
Lucia, until the. storm passed by; but then plague and a 
reign of terror passed over Florence, and on the 27th De- 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


/ 

cember, 1527, Catherine was sent to the Murate , “the walled 
up,” and tasted her first depose. Her instruction there was 
feminine and benign, to which she turned back not only in 
memory in after years, but with an intention to rejoin its 
quietude; and to that intent she endowed it, and procured 
for it those fatal gifts, exemption from taxes and special 
endowments, which made monasteries and convents hated by 
the laity, whose burthens they did not share, and who suffered 
from every ill-advised endowment. Her quietude was broken 
on the 19th July, 1530, by four commissioners of Pope 
Clement entering and demanding to lead away the Duchessina, 
who was then eleven years old. She burst into the presence 
of the nuns, ejaculating, “ Holy mothers, I am yours—am 
yours; who will dare drag a spouse of Christ from her con¬ 
vent ! ” Her emotion was unavailing; she was then mounted 
on horseback in the dress and short locks of a nun, which 
she resolutely refused to hide or change, and so she was led 
back to her former residence of Santa Lucia. 

Florence was besieged at that time by Pope Clement, and 
with her fall Catherine was restored to the Murate , from 
whence she was removed to Kome in 1531, in her thirteenth 
year, the object now of matrimonial pretensions. No maiden’s 
hand was then within her own gift, neither was the Duches- 
sina’s. Catherine’s hand was negotiated by Clement unto 
Francis I. as bride for his second son Henri. It was hardly 
credited by the world, but it came to pass on the 16th April, 
1533. Catherine had what was perhaps the first and only 
holiday of her life: she met Margaret of Austria, daughter of 
Charles V., and spent ten days with a girl companion; and 
so they rode to Florence, where was a festival in all the pomp 
and vanity of festivals ; there she gave a farewell banquet on 
the 1st of September. She resembled Jephtha’s daughter, 
taking leave of her companions ere she resigned the world. 
Sbe took water at Spezzia and landed at Nice, fraught with 


8 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


130,000 crowns as her dower, with trousseau, pearls, crystal 
casket, and she herself a pale, thin, large eyed, melancholy 
girl, trembling like a fawn or an aspen, made her entry into 
Marseilles on the 23rd October, 1533, and on the 28th Oc¬ 
tober, Pope Clement himself officiating, the victim girl was 
led to the altar in white satin and a royal mantle, spangled 
with pearls and diamonds, and was sacrificed, to the House of 
Galois, being then fourteen years and six months old—her 
husband, Henri, being just one year more; as says the song, 
“ She’s sweet fifteen, I’m one year more.” 

Such was the manner in which Catherine entered the realm 
of France. She had no pretensions then to beauty, whilst 
Henri, her husband, was under the fascination of one of the 
female spirits of that time, Diana of Poitiers (created by him 
Duchess of Yalentinois), to whom he built a palace and 
entwined their initials in the corbeils , and ennobled their 
offspring son and daughter. 

Here Catherine cultivated the fine talents native to herself 
and the race of the Medici; here she acquired her literary 
tastes, and her conduct at the Court of France is instanced 
as a model of feminine propriety. She won the love of all 
save her husband; she passed the ten first married years 
unloved by him, taunted for her failure of offspring, bending 
to the storm, and finding refuge in the love of Francis the 
king, and Eleanor the queen, and in Marguerite Queen of 
Navarre, the king’s sister; and when the Dauphin died, in 
1536, and malignant fame began, at the age of seventeen, to 
accuse her of poison and assassination of the Dauphin, it is 
said that she disdained defence, whilst the sword of every 
cavalier of France was ready to defend the fame of the demure 
and melancholy girl. 

Henri pushed his dislike so far as to desire a divorce; 
but he met with a resolute prohibition both from the king 
and the cabinet. The Dauphin found himself overruled, and 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


9 


Catherine had borne him a son when she was crowned the 
queen of Henry IT., in 1547. 

Then followed in swift succession her offspring, num¬ 
bering five sons and three daughters, only two of whom, 
Henri III. and Marguerite the Queen of Navarre, both child¬ 
less, survived her in 1589. Her nursery also held Mary 
Stewart, with Diana of Poitiers and her daughter, who formed 
part of the household of the Louvre; where, in educating her 
children most worthily, so far as the girls were concerned, 
she herself acquired beauty of feature and grace of demeanour 
—where the female court she attracted to the Louvre whilst 
she reigned as queen, and numbering upwards of three 
hundred of the nobility of France, was unequalled before and 
perhaps since in the annals of Europe. This endured until 
1560, when, at the age of forty, she was widowed of her 
husband, who fell in the jousts which celebrated the marriage 
of Marguerite his sister with the Duke of Savoy—when, in 
one of those fits of frenzy to which the whole of the race of 
Yalois was subject, he insisted on running another course 
with the Count of Montgomery, when the lance accidentally 
splintered and entered the eye and pierced the brain, and he 
fell in the sight of Catherine, his queen and widow; and to 
show the hostile and brutal spirit of the Huguenots of that 
time, the town of Kochelle struck a medal, with its mark, 
“ H—1559,” with the lance-head in effigy which slew her 
husband. 

Up to this period fame has spared the name of the queen. 
The Inquisition had been re-established in France by Henri; 
but her duties were then confined to the nursery and the 
court. She was not consulted on that objectionable step; 
the Duchess (Diana) was then the presiding female influence; 
and it is gratifying to say that she held it by mental, not 
bodily charms, for she was twenty years the king’s senior: 


10 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Catherine had neither then the will nor the opportunity to 
interfere in state matters. 

Invading the nursery, in which Elizabeth queen of Spain, 
Claude duchess of Lorraine, the ancestress to the Francises 
of Austria, and the exquisite Marguerite of Navarre and 
France, and the ill-fated Mary, queen of France and of Scots, 
we find a very bright domestic scene, which each of these 
ladies quitted with tears, and to which they reverted in 
memory with sighs—where they prattled to one another in 
verses light as air and pure as the waters which jut from 
the rock, which captivated into its flowing stream Henri III. 
and the Prince Carlos of Spain—where there was freedom, 
such as would be found now in a British mansion, and where 
Henri (then Anjou) told Marguerite that she should not have 
the Duke of Guise for a sweetheart, and that he would have 
her fouettee by her mother; and Marguerite, then fifteen, 
laughed at her overweening brother, and was equally resolved 
that Guise should wear her colours, for it was disreputable 
then for a gallant at court to ride without a favour on his 
lance or basnet; and through Marguerite’s life, from Guise at 
fifteen to her latest days, her colours were sought with 
avidity, and by universal accord Guise and Marguerite bore 
then the palm of grace and beauty from all. They were 
merry and happy days, too soon to be troubled with mar¬ 
riages and given in marriage; but I wish I could explain of 
what sort the royal fouettees were—the cane, the horsewhip, 
or the knout—for fouetter was then a religious ceremonial, 
and Henri III. had a band of 100 neophytes to flog them¬ 
selves publicly in the procession of penitents. I am inclined 
to think that the knout was the dreadful instrument of wrath, 
with the knots probably omitted. Elizabeth and Claude and 
Mary Stewart needed it not, neither did young Diana; but 
we find Henri IV. alluding to it in conversation with Mary 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


11 


de Medici: “ Madame, you complain when I fouette too severely 
your son, &c.; and this whip appears to have been freely 
used. 

We have now launched our widowed queen into the 
regency in 1559. She was now forty years of age, and had 
changed the pale melancholy nature of the girl into a majestic 
mein and a merry mood—for she was wonted to laugh mer¬ 
rily an d riding with her cortege of damsels was their worthy 
queen. Up to this time she had not interfered in politics, 
but divided herself equally between her magnificent court and 
her happy nursery; but now she was cast into the vortex of 
troubled waters; and it is requisite that we take a bird's-eye 
view of France and of parties as they existed at that time, 
and differed little, from the ascent of Francis I. to the throne 
until the reign of Richelieu under Louis XIII.—say one 
hundred years. 

It is extremely difficult to define what France was either 
territorially or constitutionally. The English Heptarchy 
was a plain and intelligible state of things, and the merging 
of the seven into one kingdom does not perplex the student; 
but the state of France to the time of Richelieu, 1624, 
defies definition. 

The Franks were originally Germans, who invaded the 
ancient Gaul and made their first capital at Cambrai. Thence 
they descended to Soissons and Rheims, and it was not until 
centuries had elapsed that Paris forced herself into the first 
place of French cities, and then often expelled her kings as 
in the days of Charles YI. and of Henri III., when the 
kings besieged Paris, and made their courts at Soissons or at 
Blois, whilst France proper beneath her king consisted of 
little more than the country between the Loire and^Oise— 
for the departments were all under rival powers, many of 
them strong enough to set the king and his capital at defiance. 
Thus the Earls of Hainault and of Flanders held the North, 


12 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


with many towns which are now within France. England 
held Calais; the King of Navarre, Normandy ; the Duke of 
Brittany, the province of Brittany; England held Acqui- 
taine; and Navarre, Navarre and Bearn. The Earls of Foix 
and the Pope held on by Toulouse and Avignon; the King 
of Naples and Jerusalem held Provence and Anjou, Maine, 
and Touraine, up to the very Loire; the Dukes of Savoie 
held the eastern provinces benea’th the Alps; the Dukes of 
Burgundy were friendly or hostile as temporarily they chose. 
The Vosges mountain range and all beyond belonged to the 
empire; and the Duke of Cleves, and the La Marke of Sedan 
could, like the Warwicks and Northumberlands of our civil 
wars, defy their suzerain or carry their fealty to England or 
to Germany. 

Moreover, between these rival potentates there were some 
hundred thousand of free Companions, who lived in towns and 
strongholds on one another’s borders; these free lances were 
hired in turn by those requiring their aid : the Swiss moun¬ 
tains and banks of the Rhine provided Switzers and Reiters, 
free Companions, and the town of Rochelle in the West was, 
for two hundred years, a nest of all the iniquities under the 
sun, pirates at sea and robbers on land, the very plague spot 
of the land of Gaul. Over the whole of this space there 
were no equal laws. Beaumanoir, who is considered a 
feudal law luminary, avers “ that he does not believe that 
throughout the whole kingdom there were two lordships 
entirely governed by the same law.” The Salique law, im¬ 
ported from Germany and imposed bit by bit on the pro¬ 
vinces as they fell in, bore fruit retributive in preventing 
direct descent; whilst the way in which females inherited 
and were granted in marriage as wards of the crown, or 
bringing a Brittany or a Burgundy to the crown by marriage; 
is quite bewildering. 

I cannot see how Charlemagne can be claimed as a French 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


13 


king, for lie held half Europe, Germany and Italy, and his 
capital was Aix-la-Chapelle. Pepin, his^e^'lield his court 
at Soissons, but he was buried at St. Denis; Charlemagne 
was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he kept his court. 
Charles VII. won Acquitaine, and drove out the English, 
1453. Louis XI. was the first to consolidate his empire at 
the simultaneous death of King Rene and of Charles the 
Bold of Burgundy, 1477; he and the Emperor Maximilian 
gorged themselves with the waif and stray estates of the two 
deceased, Louis XI. adding Burgundy, Provence, Anjou, 
Maine, and Touraine to his realm. Determined not to lose 
Brittany, two kings in turn married Anne the heiress; 
Henri II. seized on Metz, Verdun, and Toul, 1551, three 
imperial bishoprics. The great Guise defended the seizure 
successfully against the Emperor Charles V., and also won 
Calais from the English, 1558. 

Henri IV. brought Normandy and Navarre to the French 
crown, 1589; and Louis XIV. filched Strasbourg and 
Alsace, in like manner as Henri II. had filched Metz; 
whilst Savoy and Nice were added by plebiscite votes of the 
populace in our day; in 1870, the Emperor Napoleon set 
off to rectify his frontiers in the Palatinates; but Provi¬ 
dence turned the tables and restored the imperial towns, 
Metz and Strasbourg, to Germany, even as in the Roman 


Empire the god Terminus had receded under Hadrian. 

The state of parties was as complicated and as opposite as 
were the states of the realm. The Catholic religion, the 
throne, and conservatism were represented by the House of 
Guise, at that time super^eminent in worth and wealth. 
Francis of Guise was one of such men as only appear at 
periods. His form and aspect would have modelled a Jove; 
his manners were as courteous to the people as they were in 
advance of the reigning manners of the court; he and his 
brothers, the Duke of Lorraine and the Cardinal, were free 


14 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


from' the abandoned license of the time. The Duke had 
wedded Claude of Valois, daughter of Henri II., and he lived 
in domestic happiness; Francis of Guise had wedded Anne 
of Este, and the Cardinal was a man of superior worth and 
power; Mary their sister was Queen Regent in Scotland, and 
their niece, Mary Stewart, was wedded to Francis the 
Dauphin; whilst two sons and two daughters born to Claude ; 
and the house of Guise, numbering six brothers, with ample 
wealth, together with the victories of Francis of Guise, Italy 
conquered, Metz preserved from Charles V., and Calais won 
in a winter campaign from England, made him and his house 
the favourites of the Parisians and of Catholic France. 
Unhappily the court feared their great influence. The regal 
boys were wholly unequal to their cousins of Guise; and 
the three Henris, II., III., and IV., equally feared and 
warned their wives and parties of the necessity of keeping 
them down, shown graphically in the murder of three of their 
house in this history. 

Now we must reverse the picture to view the rival house 
of Bourbon. The Prince of Conde, Antoine of Navarre, and 
Henri his son, set decency and morality at utter defiance, 
whilst the Constable Montmorenci was old and worn out, and 
the Cardinal of Bourbon was the like. They were all very 
needy and subsisted by rapine and plunder, seizing the oppor¬ 
tunity of the crown falling to a minor, and the regency 
devolving on a woman, to light the flame of civil war. 
Jeanne of Navarre, wife of Antoine and mother of Henri, was 
chief performer in' these civil wars, and a dire plague to Queen 
Catherine; and as we view these wars and proceedings 
through a Protestant medium (although Luther differed 
materially from Calvin, whom they followed), and as our 
Queen Elizabeth subsidized them and their Huguenots in these 
civil wars, we find them unduly upheld in our histories, with 
worth exaggerated and faults ignored. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


15 


The characters of the Guises and of the Bourbons are open 
and intelligible—the first noble and ambitious, the second 
ignoble and rapacious. Betwixt them we have to depict 
the reigning house of Valois, which is a difficult task—for 
it was a fair stock, but ruined by its own debauchery. 
They were crazy in mind and body, plainly evidencing spinal 
imbecility. 

Francis I., whom his mother designated as her “ Caesar,” 
who wrestled with Harry VIII. and fought with Charles V., 
became the prey to his own lasciviousness. He opened the 
gates of vice to the royal court, and ruined himself and 
his posterity. Rabelais satirized him and his court, and an 
avenging genius obliterated his race in France in its third 
generation, enfeebled in body and mind, which divulged 
itself in Henry II., his son and successor in passionate action. 
He quartered the arms of England with those of France on 
the marriage of his son Francis and Mary Stewart; he seized 
upon Metz, an imperial town, which action was held good by 
the generalship of the Duke of Guise, and on the town of 
Calais, and he fell in a tournament, excited beyond mode¬ 
ration or reason, for he was but a rough soldier; but Catherine 
was firmly attached to him, and was his faithful, loving wife. 
His five sons may be ranged under one head—cankered in 
body and mind, from their father’s and grandfather’s im¬ 
moralities. They were all goodly in outward form, and 
played well at manly exercises; but passion or cunning 
usurped the place of reason in their minds, and an early 
death and ruined race was the fate of the five sons. The 
daughters left issue which survived, and bore regal positions 
in the world; but the sons were extinguished when Clement’s 
knife stabbed Henry III., the most cunning, effeminate, and 
hateful of the five brothers, whose faults were the curse of 
Queen Catherine’s life and have defiled her name with their 
turpitude. 


16 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


To tlie deatli of Henri II., as before stated, Catherine inter¬ 
meddled not in the politics. Henri was his own daring 
guide, and Diana of Poitiers his female confidant; her 
daughter was wedded to the Duke d’Aumale of the house 
of Lorraine; the Grand Prieur of France, Auvergne and 
Angouleme and Henri of Angouleme, were illegitimate sons 
of his. From the nursery and the court Queen Catherine 
was called to take the rule as regent; and it is not amiss 
here to transcribe her character, as it has been written 
by her enemies, and received as sooth from historian to 
historian, pending the two hundred years of the house of 
Bourbon on the throne of France: for no life of Catherine 
was ever written. Brantome wrote her eulogium; and the 
“ Discours Merveilleux ” was a ribald libel. Mr. Trollope has 
written her childhood, and Eugenio Alberi her life, but they 
are modern, not contemporaneous productions; indeed she 
never did either reign or rule, as I think in this treatise to 
show. 

Voltaire, in his ‘ Henriade,’ has drawn her character thus. 
He was atheistical in his want of faith, but has drawn the 
character under the influence of a Calvinistic mind. He 
writes on the queen in the mouth of Henri IV.— 

“ Beaucoup en ont parle mais peu Font bien connue.” 

“ Her husband perishing in early youth 
Gave a free course to her ambitious soul, 

And all her children, by herself instructed, 

Became her foes when they would reign alone. 

She scattered broadcast round about the throne 
With open hand distrust and jealousies, 

Opposing evermore, with too much toil, 

Guises and Condes, and dividing France— 

Evermore ready to invite the foe, 

Evermore ready to reject her friends, 

And change and change with rival interests: 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


17 


Slave unto pleasure, rivalling ambition, 

Unfaithful to her sect and superstitious ; 

And, to sum up, possessing, with few virtues, 

The manifold abuses of her sex.” 

Such is the indictment of an enemy and worthless man. 

An epitaph, which the Signor Alberi has thought worthy 
of transcribing, runs thus:— 

“ La royne qui cy-gist fut un diable et un ange, 

Toute pleine de blasme, et pleine de louange; 

Elle soutint l’estat, et l’estat mit a bas; 

Elle fit maint accords et pas moins de debats; 

Elle enfanta trois rois et trois guerres eiviles; 

Fit bastir des chateaux et ruiner des villes; 

Fit bien de bonnes lois et des mauvais edicts 
Souhaite-lui, passant, enfer et paradis.” 

“ The queen who lies here was an angel and devil, 
Overflowing with good, overflowing with evil; 

She upheld the state, and she knocked the state down, 
Was as ready to smile as was ready to frown; 

She gave birth to three kings, and to three civil wars; 
Built castles, and ruined the towns by their jars; 

Good laws and bad edicts she made, so it said is, 

So wish her, good friend, both Elysium and Hades.” 

These elaborate attempts to prove a paradox suffice to 
prove that either Queen Catherine was the monster imagined 
by the poet, which was to raise the risibility of the spectator, 
—the horse’s head joined to the human frame; or the alter¬ 
native holds good, and it was the painter who was ignorant 
of his art: and never was the catastrophe 

“ Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne ” 
more completely instanced than in these rigmaroles touch¬ 
ing Queen Catherine. Her story is very plain under 

0 


18 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI 


the type of a gallant ship wrecked by the storm; her 
feminine hand was unequal to the crisis; neither had it ever 
free scope and Hcense to hold the helm. 

One word more on these historic painters, who rush and 
arc rushing more and more into sensational paradoxes. 
Mr. Froude upholds our Harry the Eighth as a hero ; Lord 
Macaulay apotheosises William and Mary; Mr. Carlyle 
delights in Old Noll and Mirabeau; and, apropos to this 
treatise, Miss Freer finds a heroine in Jeanne of Navarre, 
whom old Plutarch would have compared with bloody Mary, 
for bigotry and cruelty. 

They all obfuscate their brains in the dusty state papers 
and musty records, whence they glean sacks full of darnel, 
tares, and cockle, with some grains of wheat, which they 
neither attempt to sift or divide the one from the other; 
they rake too in the very gutters and sewers of literature, 
where all are fish that come to their nets—barbel and roach 
thought to be trout and salmon; and vaunt their netted trash, 
however worthless, so that it weighs one scale on their side 
of the question. Mendoza to King Philip, or Drury to 
Cecil, papers in the Escurial, Castle of Usson, or our State 
Paper Office, papers on which a jury would not hang a dog; 
from whence we descend to the libels printed at Rochelle, 
anonymous and incredible, or as in the case of this history, 
of M. Pierre de l’Etoile; and it really is requisite to ask who 
this worthy was, from whom histories are drawn. He was a 
man who roamed the streets and quays of Paris, with a resi¬ 
dence falling in ruins about his ears, buying thousands on 
thousands of the sou papers, then hawked in the evening 
gloom. From whence, with a soul that balanced betwixt 
blasphemy and pruriency, he went home and wrote down all 
he had heard in the highways, and has left memoirs which 
are incredibly disgusting (and blasphemous where the Deity 
is concerned); and a record which should have been burnt by 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


19 


the hangman, has become the text-book for Bishop Peiefixe, 
and Atheist Voltaire and the Protestant writers north of the 
Alps and Pyrenees, although in the countries south of those 
mountain ranges a contrary historical creed holds good, to 
the lady authoress in this our day of those times. It is 
marvellous that the bishop who had renounced the sins of 
the flesh in monachism should perceive them in impossible 
magnitudes in others, and that (as extremes meet) the maiden 
purity of the lady historian should fall into an equal 
quagmire of absurdity, and paint horses’ heads and fishes’ 
tails appended to the form divine. It needs a draught from 
our old dramatists to put the student again off his beam ends. 
A week with Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, and Moliere, with 
the Unities of Aristotle, bring one back again to human 
nature and rational judgment. The novelists also charm us 
with reflexes of life from the court, camp, and cottage; but 
did they dare to offend our human feelings with the iniquities 
in which historians indulge, we should cast them aside as 
malignant snakes and pestilent vermin. That Cisalpine 
angels should be Transalpine devils, and vice versa, is not 
possible; the fault then, lies, in the ignorant partizan who 
abuses our patience and tries to blind our eyes. Good Uncle 
Toby used to whistle Lord Wharton’s Lilli Burlero. 

“ Oh by my shoul ’tis a Protestant Wind, 

Lilli Burlero, bullen ah la ! ” 

I entreat the reader on this side of the Alps to beware of 
the Protestant wind, as I would boldly deny on the other 
side the belief of the Catholic blasts. As Hamlet would say, 
“ Oh, avoid them both.” 

And remember, reader, that you sit in judgment and possess 
common sense ; remember the legal maxim, “ de non apparen- 
tibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio,” demand proof ere you 
condemn; and I promise you, on the word of an honest 
advocate, that you will find none; none that a barrister would 


20 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


offer, a judge would admit, or a jury suffer to weigh as one 
feather on their minds. 

The character of Queen Catherine has also been drawn in 
paradox by the hand of Miss Freer, at the period of 1556, 
and during her husband’s life, thus:—“ The young Queen 
Catherine de Medici received with marked favour those 
leaders of the Reformed party whose rank entitled them to 
appear at Court. The queen had dared to plead for the 
modification of some of the more rigorous edicts; and cited 
Marguerite, the deceased Queen of Navarre, as worthy of all 
imitation. The character of Catherine was not then under¬ 
stood ; she was pitied as a forsaken wife, domineered over 
by the mistress of Henry, Diana of Poitiers (Duchess of 
Yalentinois). She was supposed to have small influence in 
the State, yet constantly proved a formidable opponent to 
Henri’s Ministers. She was ever submissive, never volun¬ 
tarily offended; she was never dejected, never elated; also, 
she avoided that shoal on which princes make shipwreck,— 
she never took a favourite. The Reformed party, which 
numbered the great and influential, was her road to power. 
The Court was in two factions. The Guises and Yalentinois 
held rule for the king, and ruled despotically, castigating 
heresy. Then came the Bourbon princes, headed by Mont- 
morenci and the house of Chatillon, and the Reformed party, 
to whom the power of the princes of Lorraine gave umbrage, 
for his honours paled to the Duke of Guise and Cardinal of 
Lorraine; and therefore he felt it useful to be reconciled to 
the House of Yendome and the princes of the blood, which 
was effected through the mediation of Eleanor, Princess of 
Conde.” Such, from a hostile hand, is the history of Queen 
Catherine during the life of her husband, who died in 1559 ; 
then that of Francis II. and Mary Stewart succeeded, who 
chose the Guises for their Ministers. Queen Catherine was 
wholly thrust aside; and if she possessed strong political 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


21 


feelings, and any bias towards tlie Bourbon party, sbe yielded 
them and submitted herself wholly to follow and co-operate 
with the ruling power. I can see no reason to believe that 
Francis was inferior to his race : his premature death is 
attributable to his premature marriage; but the rights of the 
throne were vigorously upheld by this passing reign of seven¬ 
teen months. He was called “ the king without vice,” and 
his wife was second to none in intelligence and conduct. 
Queen Catherine was visited by the Cardinal of Lorraine 
during the quarantaine of the royal seclusion, and he urged 
for her consideration the heretical tendencies of the Bourbons. 
He proposed the banishment from Court of Diana of Poitiers, 
and offered to serve loyally, and upon these propositions she 
struck hands. She then renounced the rebels, Bourbons and 
Huguenots; and Francis took the occasion of the meeting of 
his parliament to receive their condolences, to inform them 
that the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine were 
appointed to the military and financial departments of the 
realm. The popular voice rang with loud applause, and was 
wholly with them. 

This roused the Bourbons to action : the King of Navarre, 
the Prince of Conde, Montpensier, Rochefoucauld, and 
Coligni followed the Court to Amiens, to be there rebuffed 
and defied. 

The breach began on etiquette: the right to apartments. 
Guise seized on the apartments of the King of Navarre, who 
straightway sought the Queen Dowager for redress, who 
turned coldly aside and conversed the while with the Cardinal 
of Lorraine. From thence he waylaid Francis returning 
from the chase, who met him with stern reserve. And here 
it is requisite to say, as a sufficient reason, that this rude 
rebel had countenanced the bourgeoisie of Rochelle to 
burlesque and travestie the Roman religion in theatrical 
mummeries, and had given them gratuities for their pro- 


22 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


fanity ; and also in despite of the presence of Queen Jeanne, 
who disavowed and frowned disapproval in vain. This brutal 
town struck off in effigy, on a coin, the head of Montgomery’s 
lance, which slew Henri II. The Huguenots of Rochelle 
handed over Havre to the English, in guerdon for their aid. 
Rochelle had a press and staff for writing and printing the 
filthiest of libels. Thence simultaneously appeared the ano¬ 
nymous life of Queen Catherine and the translation of 
Buchanan’s ‘ Detectio Marias ’—probably by the same hand, 
Camus, Henri Stevens, or Theodore de Beze—and there we 
find, after the manner of the Franks, a march, as follows :— 
“ Le Prince de Conde 
II a ete tue, 

Mais Monsieur l’Amiral 
Est encore a cheval, 

Avec la Rochefouchaud 
Pour chasser tous les Papaux, 

Papaux—Papaux—Papaux.” * 

Montmorenci was then despoiled of his offices, and the 
downfall of the Bourbons was completed. 

Navarre, too, received Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, am- 

* It is remarkable how manners remain in the same land. We have 
seen the Moblots of 1870 framing their march thus :— 

“ Nous partons, ton, ton, 

Comme des moutons 
Pour la boucherie; 

Nous aimons 
Pourtant la vie, 

Mais nous partons, ton, ton, 

Pour la boucherie; 

On nous massacrera 
ra—rat, 

Comme des rats— 

Ah que Bismarke ririra! ” 

Times, October 14, 1870. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


23 


bassador of Queen Elizabeth, which, coming to the knowledge 
of the Cardinal of Lorraine, compromised Navarre. He 
was ordered to attend the Court at Eheims, and there he was 
threatened. Spain, too, coveted part of the Navarre kingdom, 
and cajoled Antoine with an equivalent in the Isle of 
Sardinia. 

And now the King and the Lorraines held the Queen 
Dowager a prisoner, whilst popular fury between Calvinists 
and Romanists rose to a pitch of fury. A Calvinist murdered- 
a judge in the streets. The Huguenot conspiracy broke out 
at Amboise, but failed, and the conspirators paid the penalty 
of defeat with their lives. The Guises then resolved to 
proceed against the Bourbons, and King Antoine and Conde 
were summoned to Orleans to answer the charge of high 
treason. 

We hear of the Queen Dowager weeping, and being 
powerless. Then, as ever, her energies were exerted to 
smooth the troubled waves: she treated personally with 
Montmorenci; she effected a reconciliation for King Antoine 
and the offended Church, and she warned the Princess of 
Conde that her husband was lost if he came to Court. It is 
such generous impulse to the weaker which is handed down 
as Italian policy and craft; it was, in fact, only the prompt¬ 
ings to a Christian and wise procedure, deserving all praise 
—a beneficent hand acting in despite of adverse powers 
holding it in durance and prison. Here she lost her cha¬ 
racter for impassiveness, for her nature burst forth through 
its bonds; but the tears and the smiles into which she was 
betrayed were those of the heart, and not the Machiavellian 
policy of a wicked brain. With the best politicians of that 
age, she recognised and lamented the want of civil and 
religious liberty, which she was fain to have accorded; but 
she was but a weak woman, a looker-on, who lent a hand 


24 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


where she had an opportunity to save a life or to right a 
wrong. 

Francis and the Duke of Guise entered Orleans in state 
(18th October, 1560) with 8000 men, and the Queen and 
Queen Dowager in their train, on white palfreys. Warrants 
were there issued for arrests, and thither, in defiance, King 
Antoine and the Prince of Conde repaired; and Conde was 
committed to custody. It is held that Queen Catherine 
was enabled to protect Antoine, but Conde was condemned to 
die on the 26th November. It is stated that Catherine’s tears 
and prayers saved King Antoine and his brother. But 
Francis was transported with the Valois mental frenzy; he 
was urged, and it was proposed, that he should kill King 
Antoine with his own hand. Catherine conjured him not to 
commit so heinous a deed ; and vainly—by the Duchess of 
Montpensier—warned Navarre, who went notwithstanding. 
Then it is stated that the King’s courage failed, and that the 
Cardinal of Lorraine upbraided him for cowardice. 

Here Providence intervened. The young king paid the 
penalty of juvenile marriage : his brain became affected; he 
was mad with an abscess formed on the brain, which was 
fatal. He died ; and as Charles, his successor, was only ten 
years of age, a regency was inevitable. Navarre and Conde 
were saved, but the Queen Mother was bathed in tears. She 
named the terms of reconciliation: she forbad Navarre to 
strive for the regency; she offered to make him Lieutenant- 
General of the realm, with sole management of the affairs of 
war ; whilst edicts should be issued in their joint names ; to 
which terms Navarre submitted. 

There is nothing more noteworthy in this era than the 
mode in which the French nobles sought their governments 
or provinces, on state emergencies,—to take in safety a bird’s- 
eye view of events and to rally their followers. Thus 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


25 


Francis expired on the 5th December, 1560; Conde, liber¬ 
ated, went to Ham; Guise sought the refuge of Joinville; 
the Cardinal of Lorraine went to Metz; Mary, the queen, 
sought Fontainebleau, to fulfil her quarantaine of seclusion; 
and the Queen Regent and Navarre commenced their joint 
rule of the then destinies of France. 

The Queen Regent was then forty-two years of age, with 
six children still upon her widowed arm, when she was first 
called upon to hold the reins and guide and rule the realm. 
Hitherto she had been the obedient wife and devoted mother, 
and a sort of state prisoner during the reign of Francis and 
the Guises; no taint hitherto attaches to her name and fame: 
and now it behoves us, sitting judicially, narrowly to watch 
events in order to pronounce a just judgment upon her 
regency. A more troubled or inconsistent state of affairs 
never existed before. She had sided with the Bourbons; 
and religious liberty, in its theory, dread of the overwhelming 
house of Guise, and pique at being superseded at her Court 
by her young daughter-in-law, are sufficient and apparent 
reasons, independently of the interest, so many felt, for 
religious liberty. Of the Bourbon house, Montmorenci, the 
head, was a papist, the chief Catholic house in France; the 
Cardinal of Bourbon, afterwards Charles X., was the like. > 
King Antoine was originally a Calvinist, "after his mother 
Marguerite, but, after changing five times, he died at last a 
papist and most thoroughly worthless; whilst Jeanne, his 
wife, born a papist, died a bigoted Calvinist, and whilst the 
body of Huguenots (Rochellers) were banditti on land and 
pirates on the sea. 

Calvin, Knox, and Luther are now involved in a halo of his¬ 
toric glory by our Protestant community; but then they were 
firebrands, as uncontrolled in will and deed as the Scriptural 
possessed of the devil, who lived in the tombs, whom chains 
could not restrain; so were these fearful reformers, whose 


26 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


commission was to pull down and to destroy, and whose 
wake was devastation, mourning, and woe. The Covenanters 
in Scotland, the Huguenots in France, and the peasantry of 
Germany marched forth like ravened wolves to consume 
and to destroy. None of these were so bad as were the 
Huguenots for two hundred years. They merged the Lans- 
quenetzs, freebooters, and bandolliers into their ranks, and 
from their hold of Rochelle they raided and marauded. 
They fell on their knees, and bellowed for mercy when 
hardly pushed, and up again and at them the moment after, 
as they might. Utterly devoid of honour, principle, or 
worth, and only making their Calvinism a plea to destroy 
cathedrals and churches, rob all they might, and claim 
fellowship with the so-called Reformers of Switzerland, 
Germany, the Netherlands, and England. We are now 
about to enter on these civil wars, to control which the soul 
of the Queen Regent was utterly unequal. They were 
stamped out, in 1628, by Richelieu, and the troubled realm 
was freed from them after 200 years of villanies and 
rebellion. 

The Catholic Montmorenci now reproached the Queen 
Regent with tolerating heresy. She urged, in reply, the 
number and influence of their leaders, including especially 
those of his own house and race ; and she, in turn, urged him 
to move in a common cause against Rome, Spain, and the 
Guises. She, moreover, addressed the Pope himself (Pius IV.), 
requiring that images of the Virgin and Saints should be 
removed from churches, and that the Sacrament should be 
administered in both kinds; which demands fluttered the 
Pope in Rome, and prove beyond refutation the liberal 
aspirations of the Queen Regent. 

It is fitting to mention here the other great armour of the 
Queen Regent, in her glorious female Court. Her Court was 
then presided over by her two dames of honour, both Calvin- 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


27 


ists,—Jacquiline de Longwy Duchess of Montpensier, and 
the Duchess d’Uzes (Louise de Clermont)—pious, learned, 
and irreproachable ladies, who would have graced any Court of 
any era. As the Bourbon brutes are about to enter, and each 
of the three—King Antoine, Cond6, and young Henri—to 
draw down a court star from its sphere, and then to dub the 
Court Circeian, it is as well to place that on its true footing 
at once. 

And now it is requisite to bring upon the stage Queen 
Jeanne of Navarre, the wife of King Antoine and mother of 
Henri of Bourbon. She was a pernicious bigot, a fearful 
nuisance to Queen Catherine—stubborn and despotic, framing 
laws rough and ready as those of Draco and committing acts 
which led to dread reprisals; for, in a word, Queen Jeanne 
was the authoress of the days and slaughters of the series of 
St. Bartholomew, of which it pleases Protestants only to 
view the one of Paris, 1572. Queen Jeanne is now in her 
mountain fortress of Navarrein, with a Calvanistic band of 
broadbrims for ministers, framing codes of fierce laws, as 
beforesaid. 

Whilst his wife and Calvinist ministry were so employed, 
King Antoine went as persistently and stolidly wrong; for 
he was both fool and brute. He began wdth folly, and fixed 
a quarrel on the Duke of Guise, which entailed its own dis¬ 
comfiture. 

The Queen Kegent entreated Queen Jeanne to come to the 
fore, and help to control her husband. She was as stubborn 
as he was volatile, and she refused to come. Meantime King 
Antoine debauched the maid of honour, Mdlle. de Bouet, 
who bore him a son, and their proceedings were so scandalous 
that they became the chosen objects of satiric verses and 
notoriety. They openly tried to divorce the queen, and to 
marry; but these proceedings drew Jeanne, who was then 
thirty-three years of age, to Paris; but it was too late. An- 


28 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


toine had become the dupe of a Spanish intrigue to induce 
him to change his faith for the Roman, join the Guises, divorce 
his wife, and win the island of Sardinia, as his reward, &c.; 
and Antoine fell. This misconduct of the King of Navarre 
threw the Regent Catherine and Queen Jeanne together 
in friendly co-operation, and, for a time, there is no doubt of 
the truth of their mutual aspirations and labours in a 
common cause. 

On the 24th August, 1561, there was a theological dispute 
between Theodore de Beze, the Calvinist, and the Romanist 
Cardinal of Lorraine, before the Queen Regent, Queen 
Jeanne, King Antoine, the Prince of Conde, the Cardinal of 
Bourbon, and the two dames of honour, Montpensier and 
Uzes, where, in the opinion of the audience, the cardinal had 
the worst of it. 

From a theological dispute they proceeded to one of pre¬ 
cedency. On the 27th August the Estates-General closed 
their session, when, in the order of precedency, Conde and 
the Bourbons, as princes of the blood, claimed precedence of 
the cardinals. The Queen Regent and King Antoine decided 
in favour of the princes of the blood, and the cardinals and 
the Guise prelates retired offended. The regent, in her 
address, declared that the Roman faith should be upheld 
through the realm, whilst to the tiers etat she promised 
that the reformed doctrines should have full toleration. 
King Antoine and Queen Jeanne both addressed the 
Estates. 

So, on the 9th September, the conferences opened, and all 
were present in apparent concord; but, on the occasion of a 
marriage, where the Calvinist de Beze officiated, the papal 
legate, offended, withdrew. Queen Jeanne sent an ambas¬ 
sador to Spain to demand restitution of Upper Navarre; 
Spain, on the other hand, sent the Cardinal of Ferrara to 
lure King Antoine to her side, and detach him from the 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


29 


Huguenots and his wife. The cardinal proved the more 
skilful player at politics: Queen Jeanne was to him an 
obstinate heretic, and Antoine was bribed by the promise of 
a divorce from her; and if he put down the Conde faction 
and heresy, Mary Stuart was proposed as his reward, with 
the crowns of England, Scotland, and Navarre, with the 
deposition of the Regent Catherine and the sole regency of 
France for himself. Madlle. de Rouet, who knew nothing 
of the Mary Stewart bribe, then openly inveighed against 
the heretic Jeanne, loudly boasted her triumph and her 
approaching marriage. Antoine also moved in undisguised 
cruelty; total alienation followed; and Jeanne and Antoine 
separated, dividing their two surviving children. The king 
retained Henri ; and J eanne departed for Bearn, taking with 
with her Catherine of Bourbon, then four years old. Such 
was the storm in which the Queen Regent had to steer the 
bark. 

Then arose another faction : the league, which was named 
the Triumvirate, composed of the Constable Montmorenci 
and the Marshal St. Andre and the Duke of Guise, to 
maintain the Roman faith, to reinstate the Guises, to dis¬ 
countenance heresy and punish recusants. They followed 
in the wake of Spain, to detach Antoine from the Bourbon 
party, with the bribes of Sardinia for a realm and Mary 
Stuart for a bride, at his choice to reject or accept. 
Antoine fell into the trap, and was satirically called “ l’es- 
cliangeur,” or rat; the “ caillette qui tourne sa jaquetteand 
indeed no name could be too bad for him. 

Then burst forth the civil wars. Conde’s standard was up. 
It burst forth almost simultaneously at Lyons, Toulouse, 
Rouen, Sens, and Yassy. At Yassy, part of the appanage of 
Mary Queen of Scots, the rebels numbered 500. Guise with 
his wife great with child, his infant sons, brothers, and 100 
retainers journeyed to Paris. He tried to avoid a collision 


30 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


by not entering the town, but the Huguenots insulted them 
grossly; and Guise’s men caught them in their barn as in a 
trap and slaughtered perhaps forty. There was rough play, 
for Guise rushing to compose the strife was wounded, as he 
explained in his place in Parliament. The Parisians received 
the duke as their champion ; Navarre joined him and gained 
the name of rat. The Queen Regent stood apart; the balance 
which Antoine had created was destroyed. She appealed to 
Jeanne to aid, and conjured her to help, but Jeanne sat down 
in her native obstinacy and refused to interfere, saying the 
kingdoms of the world might be hurled to ‘the bottom of the 
seas, but she would not imperil her soul’s salvation. 

On Palm Sunday, 1562, Navarre' openly attended mass 
and joined the Triumvirate, and the procession passed in 
pomp through the streets of Paris. The Queen Regent 
found herself utterly deserted. Guise then entered Paris 
with 3000 horsemen: the Cardinal of Ferrara inveighed 
against the Regent present and Queen Jeanne absent. 

The Queen Regent then brought forward young Charles IX. 
and set him at the council board; but the Bourbons fled— 
fled to their fortress towns, Meaux and Orleans. The Queen 
Regent, deserted, would have followed, and set forth for 
Fontainebleau; but the Triumvirate, by the hand of the 
King Antoine, followed and brought her back captive to 
Paris. 

.Sully informs us here (in a note to his £ Memoires ’) of the 
danger of assassination which Queen Catherine then ran. 
Antoine and AlenQon proposed to strangle her with their 
own hands : the Triumvirate and Spain wished Jeanne to be 
strangled as well; to this her husband demurred, consenting 
only to her imprisonment. 

Queen Jeanne left Paris, and gained Yendome on the 14th 
May; she was then in allegiance with Queen Catherine, and 
her final entreaty to her husband to return to his old 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


31 


allegiance had failed. Whilst at Yendome, Conde with 400 
horse assailed the town, overthrew the altars, broke the 
images, destroyed tombs and painted windows of the cathedral 
and churches; and under his wing Queen Jeanne pursued her 
journey southward. This is not a solitary picture of Huguenot 
lawlessness. In her journey to Paris the Rocliellers had had 
a burlesque pantomime against the Roman Church: the 
like licence was performed before Queen Catherine at 
Rochelle, when they dressed up Charles IX. in masquerade 
as a priest; so insulting the queen. This party, calling 
itself the reformed, indulged in every license and insult to 
the older party, therein only following the reckless and 
insulting manners of their chiefs; for nothing more reckless, 
wrong-headed, and brutal can be conceived than the assaults 
of Calvin, Knox, and Luther on the Catholics. Their 
followers were the needy and rebellious, greedy for prey and 
plunder, and to their instincts they suited their own re¬ 
forming tactics. 

If the student will compare the calm and placable de¬ 
meanour of Charles Y. at Worms, of the young Queen of 
Scots, at Edinburgh, arguing with Knox, or of Queen 
Catherine, with those of Luther, Knox, and Calvin, they will 
at once recognise that, as the atmosphere is not cleared by 
zephyrs, but by storms, so is the political atmosphere routed 
out by the roughest and rudest of hands. As Mary Stewart, 
Charles I., and Louis XYI. were resigned and meek at the 
block, in contrary manner did the heathen rage against them, 
imagining all manner of vain things, entailing a tenfold 
heavy curse upon themselves ; and, to apply it to the point 
whereon we write, Queen Catherine was here the victim. To 
her hand was the guidance of the vessel of state committed, 
and she found herself tossed in a storm, with the party to 
which she had devoted herself—the Calvinists utterly 


32 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


faithless to her,—Antoine ratted, Jeanne crazy, and herself a 
prisoner to the Guizards. 

So began the civil wars : with a fierceness second to none; 
and, indeed, the Gallic nature appears to be capable of a 
depth of cruelty beyond their European fellows. Other 
nations have short gusts of national strifes and slaughters, 
but old Gaul renews them every century, and Ate and her 
dogs have kennelled around the Louvre. It is not my intent 
to dwell on the wearying scenes of slaughter of the ensuing 
ten years from 1562 to 1572.* The Calvinists attacked the 
Romanists, and the Romanists put down the Calvinists. The 
treaties of peace were all the work of Queen Catherine: these 
were the 

1st Civil War, 1562, and Peace of Amboise, 1563; 

2nd Civil War, 1566, and Peace of Longjumeau, 1568 ; 

3rd Civil War, 1568, and Peace of St. Germain, 1570. 

But it is of the slaughter of Romanists at Pau, in 1569, on St. 
Bartholomew’s Day, 1569, and the slaughter of Calvinists at 
Paris, on its third anniversary, in 1572, and to reach that 
point, only filling up the ten years of the regency of the 
queen, with as succinct an account as shall join the two 
periods together and retain prominently the causes and effects 
of the many defects we have to read; that is the task we now 
have on hand. 

Queen Catherine and the king were prisoners in the hands 
of the Triumvirate at Paris, when Conde, from Orleans, 

* The history by Castlenau, the M. de Mauvissiere, the last friend 
and correspondent of Mary Queen of Scots, is an excellent history of 
these exceptional and bloody days; the memoirs are addressed to his 
son, and cannot be too highly commended. Unhappily, they cease 
with the year 1570. Although he alludes to his eighth book, it is not 
forthcoming; perhaps it was suppressed for its truth; and his account 
of the events of 1572 lacked the exaggeration deplored by the historian 
Mathieu. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


33 


opened the campaign; and town after town fell to his victo¬ 
rious arm. In the mean time, the Parliament at Paris 
decreed the Prince of Conde and the Huguenot chiefs to he 
guilty of high treason. Here Queen Elizabeth of England 
and Queen Jeanne upheld the Huguenots, complicating the 
position of Queen Catherine. They were two women emi¬ 
nently fitted to throw things into disorder, by rash and' 
unadvised action; but Queen Jeanne, whilst she threw the 
weight of her strength into the Calvinist party, wrote in 
friendly terms to her husband, to the Queen, and to the 
Duchess of Guise. 

The next notable point is the death of King Antoine. 
The Triumvirate besieged Rouen, October 25, 1562 ; and 
Antoine there received a wound. In his chamber, with 
Mdlle. de Rouet by his side, he played the reveller so 
rashly that he brought on fever and delirium, and died. 
Speculation and satirical verses debated much whether he 
died a Calvinist or a Roman; but the man is quite unworthy 
of a thought, and would not have any place here, save for 
the part which he played in this story. 

The Battle of Dreux, Dec. 20, 1562, followed—won by 
the Guises, and restoring them to full sway. The Prince of 
Conde was taken prisoner on one side, and old Bourbon 
Montmorenci fell into the Huguenot hands, and Marshal 
St. Andre, a triumvir, was killed. The captured towns were 
all recaptured in 1563. 

We now approach a matter of first magnitude,—the assas¬ 
sination of Guise an<^ the avowal of Coligni of his consent 
and connivance; and the reader is bidden to note that fact, 
which is the key to the slaughter of Coligni by the son of 
Guise, in 1572. In February, 1563, Guise besieged Orleans, 
and was shot in the back by one Poltrot, a Huguenot, in the 
service of the Baron of Soubise, who accused Coligni, as his 

D 


34 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


instigator to the deed.* Coligni wrote to the Queen Regent, 
12 March, 1563:—“ Think not, Madame, that the words 
I write in self-defence are said out of regret for the death of 
M. de Guise; for I esteem that event as one that cannot 
be surpassed by fortune for the good of the kingdom and 
the church of God, and most especially it is beneficial for 
myself and my whole house .” He disavowed the murder 
on oath, in 1566; but when the admiral fell in return, 
24th August, 1572, his death was avouched by the then 
Duke of Guise in like terms, and the admiral, in falling, 
did not appear to dispute the retribution, consonant with 
that age, upon feuds of blood. 

We arrive at the month of March, 1563, and the scene 
shifts. King Antoine and Marshal St. Andre and Guise, the 
triumvirate, are dead and passed away; whilst Montmorenci, 
with the Huguenots, and Conde, with the Guizards, are 
prisoners. Queen Jeanne is at home, playing the bigot in 
Bearn and demanding the Spanish Navarre from Spain, 
while she made herself and party iconoclasts of the first 
water, making herself offensive equally to Spain, Rome, and 
France. It was stated and believed for long that she had 
married again one Guyon, and that she had by him a son, 
long recognised in the Netherlands as her son. So Queen 
Elizabeth was thought to have been the mother of Arthur 
Dudley. Mary Queen of Scots is stated by Burnet to have 
been the mother of one George Douglas, born in Lochleven; 
and the friendly Prince Labanoff firmly believes that a 
daughter was then born, and sprighted away to a French 
convent. The notion that such occurrences could be, and be 
hidden, is sufficient to refute them all. There were no such 
occurrences; but the rumours show how needful it is to use 

* Guise and Conde that nigjht had slept in the same bed, after a 
custom of that age. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


35 


common sense in reading history and to separate the impos¬ 
sible from the possible. The position of Queen Catherine is 
stated to have been one of great dignity—vainly attempting 
to reconcile the contending parties, but baffled by the uncon¬ 
trollable enmity of Huguenot and Catholic; but she was also 
perplexed by the fratricidal enmity which arose in her own 
family, between her own sons, and in fear lest their hands 
might be stained in fratricide, for “ their wits were diseased.” 

Conde, after the death of Guise, became a terrible thorn to 
the Queen: he demanded to be made Lieutenant-General of 
the kingdom. After the fashion of Antoine, and of Henri 
his son, so Conde defiled another maid of honour, his own 
relative, Mdlle. de Lineuil, who was chased forth from the 
Royal Court with ignominy ; for Conde was seeking a wife, 
and was balancing between the widow of the Triumvir St. 
Andre, the richest, or Mary Stewart, the greatest, and selected 
at last Frances of Orleans, sister of the Duke of Longueville, 
whilst he defiled even his own relative. 

Queen Catherine still pursued her adopted policy. She 
negociated a peace with Conde and the Huguenots—with 
toleration for their party—against which the Parliament of 
Paris loudly protested, and, in lieu of peace at Court, war 
raged between the parties. When the Princess of Conde 
introduced her mother, Madame de Roye, and Catherine 
seated her by her side, Anne d’Este, Duchess of Guise, arose 
and swept herself forth of the presence, followed by all 
the Guizards. 

Rome thundered, 28th September, 1563, and summoned 
Queen Jeanne to answer a charge of heresy; but the bull 
(and bull it was) roared too widely. It included Elizabeth 
of England, the King of Sweden and Denmark, the Elector of 
Saxony, Conde, Coligni, and other high and mighties—by 
overweening, the thunder crushed itself. But Queen Jeanne 
was in danger between Rome and Spain: she cast herself 


36 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


into the arms of Queen Catherine, who threw her aegis over 
her and gave her protection. Queen Catherine sent her 
envoy to Home, and by defiance and perseverance repelled 
the attack. Rqme had proposed to illegitimatize the offspring 
of Queen Jeanne and Antoine, on the ground of the precon¬ 
tract with the Duke of Cleves; but Queen Catherine had the 
power to interpose and rescue Jeanne from the peril in which 
she was then. 

Queen Jeanne, in her mad zeal and bigotry, was a dire 
infliction upon Queen Catherine ; her acts were ruled neither 
by justice or wisdom. She shut herself up in an impregnable 
mountain hold, Navarrein, and from thence she fulminated 
after the manner of Rome, but in favour of Calvinism ; and 
having set her own realm by the ears, she invoked the healing 
hand of her sovereign queen. A rebellion broke out in 
Navarre, and the neighbouring Parliaments of Bordeaux and 
of Toulouse pronounced her assumed sovereign rights over 
Bearn to be invalid, declaring France paramount; as, indeed, 
Jeanne had even signed herself a feudatory when imploring 
aid in letters to Queen Catherine, and this decree made it 
incompetent for her to alter religious codes or alienate 
ecclesiastical benefices. It was under these circumstances 
that Jeanne resolved to go personally to the Court of France 
and obtain aid of Queen Catherine ; therefore she obtained 
the appointment of the Count of Grammont to be Lieutenant 
in her absence, and went off for the French Court (January, 
1564) with a suite of eight Calvinistic ministers, godly men, 
prepared to combat the established Church by argument. 

It was at this time that Queen Catherine awoke from her 
dream—a delusive dream—of expected aid and extended 
sway from her alliances. Her daughter Elizabeth was 
Queen of Spain ; her daughter Claude, Duchess of Lorraine ; 
her daughter-in-law was Queen of Scots. Queen Catherine 
visited her daughter the Queen of Spain on the frontier. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


37 


when Philip II. took care to keep away. She found her 
daughter Elizabeth a devoted wife and Spaniard, a mother 
of Spanish children—the prey herself to political and 
domestic affairs, to which she fell an early victim. 

So her daughter Claude and the Duke of Lorraine withdrew 
themselves wholly from political strife; she also died young, 
and the duke never married again. Her son, shut by the 
Salique law from the Crown of France, domiciled in the 
maternal home of Tuscany, and his descendant mounted 
the throne of Austria as husband to Maria Theresa. Mary 
Queen of Scots, on reaching her kingdom, was overwhelmed 
by its Calvinistic rage, and vainly invoked aid of the Guises 
and of France. The beautiful and intellectual Marguerite 
was to be the victim of Henri IY.: her history will form a 
great part of the following pages. She suffered twenty years 
of not dishonourable imprisonment in the mountain hold of 
Usson, of which hereafter. She could not aid her royal 
mother, or her mother lend her any efficient aid—they all 
alike were tempest tost. The three remaining sons defy 
description. They hated each other; they acted by the 
hand of their mother, or they rebelled against her authority, 
as the humour of the moment impelled them. For nearly 
thirty years did they pursue a headlong headstrong course 
between leaguers and rebels, whilst it is difficult to enume¬ 
rate the treaties and the pacts which she effected. Roundly, 
it may be asserted that her employment for the rest of her 
life was stilling the stormy waves, and inheriting the fame 
of having created the troubles which she could not quell; 
but such remarks will be more in place when we have run 
through the years of her life and militancy. 

The Cardinal of Lorraine reappeared on the arena in the 
autumn of 1564, and resuscitated the compact of Peronne of 
1558. Queen Catherine still was unchanged. She urged 
toleration in favour of the Huguenots, who were getting into 


38 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


worse and worse savour with the established Church from the 
overweening follies of Queen Jeanne and the Rochellites. 
Queen Catherine gave herself no rest or respite. She sought 
the co-operation of Maximilian, Philip II., and the Queen of 
Scots; but she found her endeavours fruitless and unavailing 
—that she could not stem the tide of adverse events. It was 
now that she yielded, and left the side of the Huguenots and 
adopted that of the Church and of the Lorraines. Her endea¬ 
vours in favour of religious liberty had been baffled by both 
sides: the opposition of the Catholics and the utter worth¬ 
lessness of the Bourbons and Huguenots. Every day’s 
intercourse with that party only involved Queen Catherine 
in deeper disgrace. They yielded Havre to Queen Elizabeth ; 
they took subsidies of all the enemies of France; they en¬ 
listed the mercenary bands of Swiss, German reiters, and 
Lansquenets, to plunder and to raid her realm and the estab¬ 
lished Church. It is a wrong definition to say that Queen 
Catherine left the cause of toleration: she was expelled 
violently from that path by those in whose cause she 
laboured; she was becoming isolated between the two 
parties; and in this wreck of her previous attempts we may 
easily discover the charge of political perfidy, to which 
charge she is not a bit subject in truth. It was necessity 
which had made her name Guise Lieutenant-General of the 
realm and cast off the wretched Bourbons. 

In 1564 the compact of Peronne was revived; the present 
phase being to seize the heretical Queen of Navarre, and 
yield her a prisoner to Spain. The Pope and the two Car¬ 
dinals—Lorraine and Bourbon—were the conspirators. But 
we find Queen Catherine on the other side tending on her 
sister queen. Elizabeth of Spain aided her mother to save 
Jeanne; they both appeared as mediators betwixt the angry 
Romanists, ejected from their temporalities and proscribed 
from their worship. But Jeanne rushed to her mountain 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


39 


hold Navarrein, and as pastime devised a new code of ultra- 
Draconic laws. Queen Catherine the while was pursuing 
worthy objects of peace: she selected Michel d’Hopital, a 
man of infinite worth, to be her Chancellor, who proved a great 
law reformer; she fostered Montaigne, Ronsard, and other 
men of worth and letters; she commenced to build the 
Tuileries, and she set forth to Bayonne to visit her daughter 
and King Philip. All that Queen Catherine gained from that 
visit, where Philip of Spain would not meet her, but sent 
instead the Duke of Alva to her great disappointment, was 
a subsequent libel upon her—that then and there she and 
Alva had discussed and agreed upon the massacre of the 
Calvinists, which was feigned to have come to pass eight 
years after, in 1572. It is not only utterly devoid of any 
proof, but no business whatever was then transacted; there 
was a fortnight of mummery and joustings, where the queen 
sat with a heavy heart with her daughter, without her lord, 
who, daily expected, came not. Alva was his representa¬ 
tive there simply to do nothing, and nothing in the king’s 
absence was done. In the mean time the peace of Troyes was 
signed with England, 11th April, 1564. 

The Duke of Nemours here offended Queen Catherine 
deeply. Pie had clandestinely married Madlle. de Rohan, 
a maid of honour allied to Queen Jeanne; but when the 
Duchess of Guise (Anne d’Este) became a widow, and 
for whom he had an early love, he repudiated Madlle. de 
Rohan against all the power Queen Catherine could use: he 
sued for a divorce at law and obtained it, and the divorced 
woman became the protegee of the queen mother—innumer¬ 
able are such instances of the goodness and justice of Queen 
Catherine. 

King Charles and the queen mother, as for henceforward 
we must call her, for he was declared majeur at Rouen in 
1563, and has now become so by nature, met Queen Jeanne 


40 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


at Nerac, 1st August, on their return from Spain: she 
accompanied them to Yendome, from thence to Paris, and 
carried off her son Henri, by the connivance of King Charles, 
and against the will of the queen mother. Queen Jeanne 
reached her own territories, and thence set the queen mother 
at defiance, refusing to send her son back to Paris, and setting 
him instead to Greek, Latin, and the old fathers, much to 
the urchin’s disgust. Here she pursued her headstrong and 
despotic rule with her own subjects, who on their side set 
her at defiance. Plots and bloodshed became the rule in her 
divided kingdom; and no eastern potentate was ever more 
despotic than Jeanne made herself in and from her mountain 
hold of Bearn, where her decrees were never executed at 
all and remain literary curiosities. 

Such was the state of affairs in 1567, at the breaking forth 
of the second civil war,—the object of which was to put 
Conde and Coligni in the place held by the Lorraines; and 
to that end they essayed to capture the king and the queen 
mother. But rumour ran before them, and the court escaped, 
fleeing from Monceaux to Meaux, and thence to Paris, where 
they found the old Constable Montmorenci and six thousand 
Switzers on their side. The Cardinal of Lorraine had a 
nearer escape, and lost his baggage though he saved himself 
by whip and spur. Coligni and Conde encamped at St. 
Denis, with the determination to starve Paris out. The 
whilst young Henri of Bourbon, fifteen years old, under the 
Count of Grammont, took the field in Navarre. Conde was 
repulsed at the battle of St. Denis, but the old Constable 
Montmorenci was cruelly assassinated by two Scots—Robert 
Stewart and a companion, who shot him with a pistol in 
the back. This event, which was like that which occurred 
to the Duke of Guise at Orleans, will be triplicated by 
the murder of Conde at Jarnac: we may, therefore, con¬ 
clude such events to be concordant with the manners of the 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


41 


Huguenot times, more than of individual or extraordinary 
turpitude. 

The Prince of Conde retreated to Lorraine, and found aid 
and help from the aroused Huguenots, as well as from 
England, Saxony, and Brandenburg. On the other hand, the 
king and queen mother were fain to seek aid of the Roman 
Catholic powers, but their position was one of great peril; 
and so pitiable was their dilemma, that a peace with Conde, 
if possible, was preferable by far to a confederation with 
Italy and Spain. The financial difficulties of the king were 
infinitely greater than on the other side; supplies flowed 
from the Huguenots and their supporters as requisite to their 
venture, whilst supplies were raised compulsorily by the king. 
The Swiss and Lansquenets only fought for pay, to which 
the Huguenot party added plunder. The Huguenots had 
also the advantage of numbers; and in Languedoc, at Nismes 
especially, they indulged in all their native ferocity, and 
raided towns and countries with reckless cruelty,—plunder 
and license were what they followed : in fact, they were ban¬ 
ditti at home, rebellious to the church and state, and confe¬ 
derate with all their kingdom’s enemies—traitors of every 
species of villany, political and domestic. 

The queen mother negociated another peace, that of Long- 
jumeau, 2nd March, 1568, in which the edict of Orleans, of 
March, 1563, was renewed — which was equivalent to a vic¬ 
tory to the Huguenots; and it was granted by the queen in 
good faith, and in full concordance with the bent of her mind. 
But whether necessity or policy urged the treaty, she neither 
began the next war nor was prepared for it, and the peace was 
nicknamed La Paix Boiteuse. It appears that the queen 
mother advanced 300,000 crowns that they might dismiss 
the mercenaries; and it was on the demand upon Conde and 
Coligni for repayment of this sum, and for the yielding up 
the towns they had won, which they then refused to do; 


42 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


the history runs that in August the Court resolved to capture 
Conde and Coligni, and gave orders accordingly to the 
Marshal Tavannes, who, as his son declares in his Memoires , 
refused accordance with his orders, and gave private infor¬ 
mation to Conde, Coligni, and D’Andelot, who saved them¬ 
selves with their families on the 23rd and 25th August 
(remarkable dates for several years to come), and they all 
found refuge at Rochelle, from whence we date the third civil 
war. 

There Queen Jeanne followed, and made common cause 
with the rebels. She had entered on a full career of bigotry, 
bordering on insanity; she repudiated all King Charles’s 
endeavours to alleviate the position of the Catholics in Bearn, 
she fulminated threats in reply; equally she repulsed the 
queen mother’s invitation to Paris. Queen Jeanne has her 
Protestant admirers; but a more impracticable bigot and 
enemy to any peace, or greater thorn in the side of France, 
cannot easily be imagined. 

In the mean time Conde lost his wife, and hurried not to 
wed his paramour kinswoman Mdlle. de Lineuil—but to 
fortify himself by the heiress Frances of Orleans. So old Co¬ 
ligni, who lost his wife in these terrible times—which might 
be called wife-killing—married Jacqueline of Savoie, a rich 
widow; which troubled her brother, who confiscated her pos¬ 
sessions. These things are needed to be recorded, because 
our Protestant historians claim a prescription of piety and up¬ 
rightness for the Protestant Calvinist, to which he was utterly 
unentitled; for a more vile set of satyrs never polluted 
humanity than the then Bourbons and Navarres. The house 
of Lorraine was immeasurably their superior in morals and 
decency, as in everything else. 

Now the rebels were gathering head under the wing of 
Queen Jeanne and her precocious son Henri, who then 
began his career of wit, pleasure, and knavery. He insulted 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


43 


La Motte Fenelon, the ambassador of King Charles, “that 
it only needed a pail of water to make the Cardinal of 
Lorraine burst.” The wit, or joke, is possibly lost in the 
translation, but it was insulting, and meant to be so by 
our young scapegrace of 16 years of age, who proceeded 
at that early age to appropriate to himself a mistress in his 
mother’s Court, —the Countess of Guiche; and to borrow 
money from all whom he could cajole to lend on the 
acceptance of his “ acceptance,” or sign manual, which is 
recorded by his admirers to have been very successful in 
raising him ways and means. Young Pickle not only began 
thus early to imitate his sire, but he played the hypocrite 
towards his mother meanwhile. Such dissimulation might 
have descended to him from his mother, for she was herself 
a mistress of dissimulation where despotic force failed her. 
When she prepared to flit to Rochelle she invited the son of 
the governor to run a tilt with young Henri; they then 
received the Holy Communion, and, running off, escaped 
to the Huguenots at Rochelle. Thence she assailed the 
king, the queen mother, and the Duke of Anjou, with a 
torrent of epistles, which was her pastime, urging them to 
cast off the Cardinal of Lorraine and revert to the Bourbons 
and their cause. But they were all weary and sick of 
fruitless endeavours to propitiate Huguenots, which was a 
thing not feasible, and her epistles were met by a decisive 
and coercive reply, and an interdict against the reformed 
religion throughout France, of 28th September, 1568. Both 
sides were equally ferocious in hate and sectical zeal. The 
Queen of Navarre headed the Huguenots in Rochelle, and 
named Conde general of the army: she sent embassies 
and received subsidies, and was the avowed and irre- 
concileable opponent of the king and queen mother. 

The king and queen mother were then at St. Germain 
with forces very unequal to the occasion: the cardinal did 


44 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


not command his kinsmen as did the late Duke of Guise; 
and whilst there was lukewarmness of his side there was a 
burst of fervour in favour of Calvinism. Conde had one 
army, Coligni had. a second, and D’Andelot a third, the 
Count D’Acier a fourth, computed at 200,000 combatants. 
The winter supervening was the best friend the king found 
or possessed. 

At a Council held at the Louvre it was resolved to 
sequestrate the domains held in fief, and the kingdom of 
Bearn, under the specious plea that Jeanne and her son were 
captives in Rochelle: which decree was instantly put in 
force by the Parliament of Toulouse, and immediately 
effected by the dominant Catholic party in Bearn, where the 
armorial bearings of Navarre were pulled down and those of 
France run up. 

Nevertheless the Court at the Louvre made overtures for 
peace; but Conde answered roughly “ That his arms were 
not against the king but against the Cardinal of Lorraine, 
and that he would lay down his arms if the king would 
grant liberty of conscience and license for the public exer¬ 
cise of the Protestant faith.” They demanded what they 
themselves would not grant, and what had been constantly 
accorded to them: the plea was fictitious and untrue; but at 
present it is Queen Catherine who is on her trial in these 
pages. She is accused of Machiavellian dissimulation. The 
dissimulation appears to me to be wholly on the Huguenot 
side, and in the wordy correspondence of Queen Jeanne I 
see neither truth nor honesty: but I believe the fact to be 
that the stone of rebellion w r as set rolling, and that it is not 
in human power to stop it—when rebellion is set afoot it 
runs its course in despite of any endeavours to restrain it. 
Such was then the state of things; the dogs of war were 
slipped, and human actions were subservient to the powers 
invoked to action. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


45 


13th March, 1569, was fought the Battle of Jarnac, when 
Henri of Anjou at 16, under the Marshal of Tavannes, 
carried off a notable victory. The Huguenots had a great 
defeat. Conde bore the retributive fate for the murder of 
Montmorenci at St. Denis, and was shot in the field by 
Montesquiou, captain of the Swiss Guards. The names of 
the men who committed the murders being remembered and 
vaunted shows that these were deemed to be worthy acts, 
and so recognised by either side respectively. 

To account for things so unchivalric in days still boasting 
of ancient chivalry it may be pointed out that prisons then 
had no being—Vincennes, Ham, the Louvre, St. Michael’s 
Mount, and the Bastille, might receive a great magnate and 
hold him in keep, but, for rank and file, massacre had 
hitherto been the rule. Even in the days of pure chivalry— 
Dunois, Bayard, and our Black Prince—massacre was the rule, 
with burning and raiding of villages and castles, save where 
there was a ransom to be had: that phase of chivalry had 
passed, but the phase of prisoners of war had not come; 
there was no means of holding captives prisoners ; therefore, 
where no ransoms were to be had, massacre was the necessary 
rule; which accounts for these unchivalric deeds. 

Assuredly there is no tinge of the yielding “ rescue, or no 
rescue,” religiously observed : both Conde and Coligni, 
according to the recorded history, accepted their own 
murders as inevitable consequences of their defeats. Life, 
too, was held by its possessors far more lightly than in later 
times ; the loss of strength, or “to die on wet straw like a 
mangy tyke,” was held to be more dreadful than the scaffold, 
block, or hanging. Such manners are constantly on the 
change, and it is never safe to judge one period by the 
manners of another. The cheap bowstring of the Turk was 
the predecessor of the dear prison of to-day, and there is 
much to be said on both sides. 


46 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Young Henri of Bourbon, 16 years of age, was saluted 
general of the Huguenots. Queen Jeanne harangued the 
host for him, and so we see two younkers, Anjou and Henri, 
each at the earliest age nominally commanding the armies. 
But perplexities fell by battalions upon the queen mother. 
Charles IX. took deep jealousy and envy at his brother 
Anjou’s fame and victory. Queen Elizabeth rushed to the 
rescue of the Huguenots, and, to gratify her propensity of 
hoarding wealth and jewels, she lent 50,000 crowns, receiving 
the Navarre jewels in pawn—which she never would restore 
—and she prigged 400,000 crowns sent by Spain to the 
Duke of Alva in Flanders, whilst refuging in Plymouth 
and Southampton. Now, too, arose a new Conde and a new 
Guise, and married sisters— Marie and Catherine of Cleves. 
The Duchess of Nevers was the third, Henrietta of Cleves. 
Here was a house divided against itself and perplexing 
history by intermarriages. 

On the 27th May D’Andelot died of fever, who was second 
to Conde as a chief. On the 23rd June an encounter took 
place at Roche-Abeille, where the Royalists, dispersing their 
enemies, had a check. This was followed by the battle of 
30th September, of Montcontour, where Coligni was wounded, 
and the Huguenots defeated, with great losses, by Anjou; 
and Coligni joined with broken forces the Count Mont- 
gommery, in Bearn, who was there then Queen Jeanne’s 
lieutenant-general. They pursued their raids and cruelties 
in the south, especially in the raid of Nismes (on 16th 
November), whilst the Royalists did the like at Orleans; 
and both sides were equally brutal. Coligni almost dic¬ 
tated the next peace — the peace of St. Germain — 8th 
August, 1570, where his demands were conceded, espe¬ 
cially in yielding to the Huguenots the four towns, 
Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite. There 
could be no duplicity on the side of the king and queen 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


47 


mother in this peace, to which they could merely give a 
slow assent. 

We now enter the era (1570 to 1572) of the day of Saint 
Bartholomew, which our historians have chosen to make the 
stalking horse of their opprobrium; and it is remarkable how 
this date year by year teems with extraordinary adventure. 
In 1568 it was graced by the attempt to seize the Court at 
Meaux; in 1569, it w r as the Bearnese St. Bartholomew; in 
1572, the Parisian St. Bartholomew; and in 1573, the re¬ 
union of the Huguenots reassembled at Montauban, on the 
anniversary ; whilst, three hundred years later, the same cry 
was in the mouth of the Parisians, with slaughter equal to 
the prototype : “ Les pretres enfermes aux Carmes du Luxem¬ 
bourg n’avaient ete juges non plus; les federes du Midi les 
avaient massacres en leur criant, * Souviens-toi de la Saint 
Bartelemy! * ” which slaughter lasted four days, and was esti¬ 
mated at from 8000 to 10,000.— Erchman-Chatrain, 4 Histoire 
(Tun Paysan ,’ p. 20. The 24th August appears to have been 
a sort of Palilia , by way of harvest-home, in France; and 
I propound the question here, that if the populace of the 
Midi (south) remembered three hundred years after the event 
(the Bartholomew of 1572), assuredly we may presume that 
the Parisians of that day had not forgotten its predecessor of 
1569, three years before, when Queen Jeanne hurled the 
Roman priests with pinioned arms from the bridge of Pau 
into the river to drown. To this point does the history 
now approach—the main point to be discussed; and before 
addressing myself to my task, and to rescue my reader from 
the hypocrisy of historians, I wish to illustrate the manners 
of that time, especially our own. 

I have noted before, there were no prisons in these days 
for the commonalty; prisons were for princes, death was for 
the people. If historians need an object of especial horror, 
it may be found in the sack of Rome by the German 


48 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Lutherans, led by Bourbon; in the massacre of Pau by 
Queen Jeanne; and in the extermination of the Irish by 
Queen Elizabeth: the fierceness of the Covenanters of Scot¬ 
land, the Huguenots of Rochelle, and of the German 
Lutherans, under Muncer, will bear the palm with anything 
Spain or Rome ever authorized. Auto-da-fes and Smithfield 
fires have unhappily been equally authorized by either side 
in their dominant hour, but generally without cruelty beyond 
their execution. It is mobs who mutilate, torture, insult, 
exhume the corpse, and scatter dust and bones to the winds. 
The cruelties of princes are merciful by those of a Jacquerie 
or a Parisian revolution. Up to the time of which we write 
the noblest names—our Black Prince, Bayard, Dunois— 
fought with fire and sword, sparing none save those who 
could ransom themselves. No quarter was asked or expected 
where the battle was a Voutrance. It is said that Queen 
Elizabeth received the news of the St. Bartholomew of 1572 
in mourning attire and in silence. If that be true, hypocrisy 
could hardly go further; for at that very moment, if the 
Parisians slaughtered thousands, Queen Elizabeth slaughtered 
millions in her war of extirpation in Ireland. Whilst urged 
by some feminine pique or folly, she welcomed Anjou, 
accepted his presents, which were solid gold, gave him a ring 
of two penniesworth, and stood godmother to King Charles’s 
child, born at Paris at that unhappy tide. It is a righteous 
task to rend the veil from Queen Elizabeth’s brow, and 
proclaim her hypocrisy. She accepted Havre from Conde, 
and lost it by starving her own garrison. Mad at the loss 
of Calais, her parsimony forbade her to victual Havre. The 
Earl of Warwick was her unfortunate general. She fostered 
all rebellions, while she promised much and did little, save 
to buy and purloin the jewels of Burgundy, Scotland, and 
Navarre, and refuse to restore them; to seize on the cash of 
Spain sent to the Duke of Alva in Flanders, taking temporary 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


49 


refuge at Southampton; to plunder Spain at Cadiz and Peru, 
and intercept her gold galleons clandestinely in time of 
peace; to take shares with the pirate adventurers, and, with 
the connivance of Drake, to rob them of the spoil, as Hal 
and Poins robbed the robbers on Gadshill,—“ A plague on it 
when thieves cannot be true to each otherand whose edicts 
were all dissimulation; dissimulating to drive Scot rebels from 
her presence ; dissimulating to expel the Flemings; dissimu¬ 
lating to welcome Anjou; and to sit in black attire for St. Bar¬ 
tholomew, and whilst her general in Ireland had committed 
cruelties which top all others of that age or any other,—the 
Isle of Bathlin, where six hundred refuged women and 
children were hurled into the waves; the slaughter of the 
omened names of Clandeboy and Surleyboy, and lastly, the 
murder in cold blood, at St. Mary’s Wick, of six hundred 
Spanish soldiers, invited thither by the recognised chieftains 
of Ireland, those with whom treaties had been made by 
Elizabeth herself as potentates; and when the Spaniards in 
chivalric and noble soldiership surrendered, as having been 
deceived by the Desmonds and Fitzgeralds, they were shot 
in cold blood, every man of them. These are the antecedents 
of this Queen, to entitle her to wear black and to frown. 
I draw these facts from Mr. Froude, but omit the unfeminine 
expressions which he extracts from the correspondence of 
Mendoza to King Philip, raking sewerage from sewers, as is 
the curse of this age, to bespatter fairer fames than that of 
Queen Elizabeth. Queen Catherine, and her two fellow 
queens, Queen Mary and Queen Marguerite, are all victims 
to the levity of Buchanan, de Beze, “ Drury to Cecil,” and 
“ Mendoza to Philip; ” with Pierre l’Etoile to buy the penny 
sheets in the streets, and gobble their vile trash as wholesome 
food. Such libellers are vile; and shame on Mr. Froude, 
who has copied out their ribaldry, unworthy of belief. Did 

E 


50 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. . 


not Duplessis Mornay write to Queen Louise a description 
of Queen Mary’s execution? and yet Mr. Froude picks up 
the two-sou paper of the last speech and confession, and 
inflicts the world with its dismal trash! Here is a historian 
who will rail by the ream upon St. Bartholomew, and fish for 
any dace or gudgeon to garnish his dish withal with slander 
of queens. 

And now, having quenched my indignation 

“ By walking four times round the quadrangle,” 

I proceed to inform you, lector benevole, that Queen Catherine, 
the queen mother, is as innocent of the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew as she is of the Revolution of 1790, or as, 
reader, you are yourself. She is but the scapegoat; for 
which oblation, unless she had been a pure and innocent 
offering, she would not have been a competent victim to bear 
the burden of that iniquity. For these three years—1569 to 
1572—Queen Jeanne is the heroine both of good and bad, but 
not much of the former. She comes of a talented race of 
women. Her grandmother, Louise of Savoie, has left her 
Memoires ; her mother, Marguerite of Angouleme, Queen of 
Navarre, had been the hostess of Calvin ; and in her Hepta- 
meron has left a compound work, founded half upon Boccaccio 
and half on Erasmus— the tale of love of one and the moral 
dialogue of the other thereupon. Jeanne gave vent to her 
maternal inheritance in inditing codes of laws and diplo¬ 
matic epistles of fearful length, and special pleadings, with 
which she inflicted the queen mother, appealing especially 
unto her as separate from the king. Jeanne was a dreadful 
woman. The Kings of Navarre had from time immemorial 
been the thorn in the side of France, and Queen Jeanne did 
not degenerate from her ancestry. She was as despotic as 
Semiramis, and sat on her mountain keep of Navarrein 
decreeing— 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


51 


Banishment to depraved morals. 

Imprisonment on bread and water to drunkards, and a fine 
of 100 sous to the innkeeper. 

Imprisonment, exile, and fine to blasphemy. 

Majority of males, 25 years; females, 20 years. 

Sumptuary laws, and articles forbidden wholly. 

Ecclesiastical discipline. 

Payment of the Calvinistic ministry. 

Celebration of divine service. 

Definition of her own royal authority! 

Definition of the powers of the Council of State. 

And such codes were accepted, nemine contradicente, and stored 
away as literary curiosities ; existing happily still, there are 
several such codes. And after the massacre of which we 
are about to write, she decreed the penalty of death to her 
subjects who should recall it to mind, or discourse upon that 
subject. 

Queen Jeanne was then at Rochelle, issuing arbitrary 
decrees for the collection of taxes, haranguing troops, and 
striking a gold coinage with her own effigies; possessed, 
apparently, of an indomitable soul and body, and suffered to 
play as she chose, the authorities acting the while as they 
chose to act. She now nominated a general of her armies, the 
Count of Montgomery, whose unfortunate lance had slain 
Henri II. in the joust—then represented on a current coin of 
Rochelle, 1559—and who had commanded at and lost Rouen. 
Queen Jeanne now selected him to reconquer Bearn from the 
royal forces, which duty he entered upon 6th August, 1569. 

In the interim, the Parliament of Paris had attainted the 
Admiral Coligni of high treason, with degradation and con¬ 
fiscation to himself and children, and a reward of 50,000 
crowns for his capture, alive or dead. He was hanged in 
effigy, and his escutcheon was broken by the haugman. 
And so far King Charles consented to the decree of the 


52 


CATHNRINE DE MEDICI. 


Parliament; but be forbad, or rescinded, their decrees against 
the Queen of Navarre, Heiiri her son, and the Prince of 
Conde— especially rescinding those pronounced against 
Conde. Here it is evident King Charles acted adversely to 
the queen mother and his brother Anjou: jealousy had seized 
his soul against his brother, whilst Queen Catherine was 
borne away with hope and content at the sight of her son’s 
victories of Jarnac and Moncontour. From this time to his 
death, when he recognised his error, he was hostile to his 
mother and Anjou. 

The town of Orthez was attacked and carried by Mont¬ 
gomery. The carnage was of the most horrible description; 
all were massacred, regardless of age, sex, or supplication. 
The corpses were cast into the river Gave, which is described 
as blocked by them. The monasteries and convents were 
burned by the “ Seven Huguenot Viscounts,” whose names 
we may omit. Every Catholic found in arms was bound 
hand and foot, and cast from the bridge into the river. One 
only, the Dean of Oleron, is said to have escaped. The 
castle was then cannonaded, but the garrison made terms and 
surrendered. 

The like scene of murder and massacre was enacted at 
Pau. When the Council of State were reinstated, they 
decreed and proclaimed every noble who had fought against 
the Huguenots guilty of treason; pronouncing sentence of 
proscription of person and confiscation of property, “ dead 
or alive, absent or present.” Six barons who had surrendered 
at Orthez, urged their own immunity by virtue of that 
capitulation. 

Montgomery, as a soldier, was touched on the point of 
honour; but the Council clamoured, and the soldier was over¬ 
ruled. On the 24th August, 1569, the six barons were led forth 
from prison, placed amidst a company of Huguenot soldiers, 
who, on command, fell on the barons and immolated them. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


53 


Such was the serpent-seed sown, which grew up into the 
St. Bartholomew. It had its origin in Orthez and Pau: 
the murderers were Huguenots, the dastard knight was 
Montgomery ; and this was the source and fount of the St. 
Bartholomew of 1572. 

These Pyrenean scenes occurred between the battles of 
Jarnac and Moncontour. Words can hardly paint the enve¬ 
nomed fury of both sides. “ Coligni and Montgomery ravaged 
with relentless furybut they were conquered in the field, 
and Poitiers was successfully defended by the Duke of 
Guise, then an aspirant to the hand of the Princess Mar¬ 
guerite of Yalois. The Huguenots were as prompt to cry for 
mercy, and make abject promises as to break them the instant 
afterwards. In the propositions for peace, King Charles 
opposed his victorious brother. The queen mother addressed 
Coligni, who responded in demands which seem ironical— 
asking all, and conceding nothing. Queen Jeanne opened 
her literary batteries against the queen mother with all that 
stolid obstinacy which is the characteristic of the early 
Calvinists. The Peace itself bears marks of the queen 
mother’s hand: toleration was granted, equal civil rights 
were accorded, and a general amnesty was granted. The 
Parliament confirmed the edict, which was proclaimed 11th 
August, 1570;—the principal thing notable being the ab¬ 
sence of any master-hand : feminine faith and pity yielded the 
Peace of St. Germain, which proved another and utter failure. 

The Huguenot leaders repaired to Rochelle and to their 
own holds, in lieu of Paris. Peace did not suit with their 
slender means and hungry mouths. It was the royal party 
and the Catholic community which sighed for rest and to 
possess their holdings in peace: to wrest them from the 
CathoHcs and enjoy them in their stead was the need of the 
Huguenots. Rochelle was a pirate and a bandit hold, of but 
few inhabitants (18,000), but a fortress of advantage. 


54 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


The intervening year of 1571 was one of comparative 
peace. Queen Jeanne visited Pau, and indulged in her pro¬ 
pensity for letter-writing. She ceaselessly wrote epistles of com¬ 
plaints, beseeching friendship, and remaining herself utterly 
impracticable in deed or will; whilst Coligni visited Paris 
on the urgent request of all the royal party, and there is no 
doubt that the warm hospitality with which he was received 
was wholly unfeigned. The time was given to marriages 
and betrothals. 

Coligni had taken a second rich wife, and had given his 
daughter to the penniless Teligny ; Alen^on went for Queen 
Elizabeth of England; Guise aspired to Marguerite, opposed 
by King Charles, who destined her to Henri of Bourbon, and 
by Anjou, who hated and maligned his sister, as she has 
recorded in her Memoires, twice accusing her of partialities, 
which was true in respect of Guise, whom she would have 
preferred; but French maidens had no power to dispose of 
their own hands or hearts. There is no sadder phase in the 
history of these times than the sad fates of the heiress 
maidens who, like our half-fabled Queen Guinevere, had to 
“ wear a crown, and weep.” Coligni’s wife died in prison, 
by the wrath of her brother and liege lord Duke Emmanuel 
of Savoy, on account of this marriage; and the fair Mar¬ 
guerite—fairest of the fair—was denied to Henri of Guise, 
to whom, as the Duchess of Retz averred, all other men 
appeared to be plebeian, for King Charles had other views, 
and chased Guise from the Court and, as they say, com¬ 
manded Henri d’Angouleme, his natural brother, to murder 
him. Guise yielded to the storm, and sought his mother, 
Anne d’Este, who, to save his life, urged him to marry 
Catherine of Cleves, then a widow and Princess of Porcien, 
that very night. It was a blow to the Princess Marguerite, 
who fell ill thereupon, and very hardly recovered, not 
without prescience—if prescience influence mortals: but she 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


55 


was doomed to the vile Bourbon; and, by that marriage, 
Guise, Conde, and Nevers became brothers-in-law, marrying 
the three heiresses of the duchy of Cleves. 

We now revert to the Princess Marguerite, and her mar¬ 
riage with Henri of Bourbon. It is bootless to ask what 
were the wishes of the queen mother: they were not con¬ 
sulted or cared for; the resolution of the king overrid any 
aspirations of the queen mother, which may reasonably be 
suspected to have been towards Guise. Marguerite, as in 
French feminine duty bound, was submissive, except in her 
illness; but Queen Jeanne was an opponent. She urged 
the relationship and the opponent creeds as causes of dissent. 
She refused until the year 1572, when she was overborne, and 
was pressed to visit Paris with the bridegroom, the king con¬ 
senting that they should be wedded by the Calvinistic 
ritual. To this Jeanne assented but, in her irrepressible 
obstinacy, decided that her hopeful son should wed by 
proxy. Whilst Jeanne was obstinate, King Charles was mad, 
deriding her and his brother Anjou, then, as always, his 
opponent; he assailed Coligni also, and uttered “ fierce taunts 
with glistening eyes.” The queen mother possessed no 
power between this crazy king and obstinate queen. Mar¬ 
guerite was righteously offended at the absence of her be¬ 
trothed—it was all distasteful to her: the loss of Guise; the 
different creeds; and the law which subjected her to the 
disposal of the king. Pending these disputes, Queen Jeanne 
retreated to Plessis-la-Tour ; the king, with his Court, to the 
neighbouring Blois, whither Queen Jeanne, after much pressing, 
also repaired, and thus attended, as we are informed happily 
by English authorities, Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir 
Thomas Smith, who were there, ambassadors from England, 
and by their testimony dissipate what else would be impene¬ 
trable mist. In their despatches, they stated that the mar¬ 
riage continued doubtful; that they had dined with the 


56 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Queen of Navarre, and conferred with her in an inner 
chamber, with twelve others, three of whom were clerical 
ministers; that the sole objection there turned on religion— 
the propinquity of blood not being mentioned. Dinner 
ended, they again retired to the inner chamber, where a 
dozen others, with three ministers (apparently a relay) in 
attendance. She then discussed questions of form—the sur¬ 
plice, the stole, and the “ preche ; v also the proxy, whether he 
should he a Papist at a Papistical ceremonial, or might be a 
Calvinist. Walsingham, recording this trumpery bigotry, 
sums up by saying the king was determined on the marriage. 
This English despatch and Brantome throw light upon 
Queen Jeanne’s complaint, that Queen Catherine laughed 
and made light of difficulties. Queen Catherine, in her 
zenith, lost the melancholy of her maiden years, and had a 
ringing beautiful laugh. Her risibility was provoked at the 
sight of Queen Jeanne and her train of Tartuffes, her twelve 
godly men, assembled there to debate of stoles and surplices, 
of Papist or Protestant proxy, and wandering about seeking 
for champions to devour, by harangues which lasted a 
livelong month—a month of hammer and tongs: King 
Charles merrily declaring his will to yield all such points, 
where Huguenot and Catholic could never agree, but 
desiring, as proper, the proper presence of the bridegroom. 
As this progressed, the queen Mother withdrew offended; 
Marguerite had the marriage at no heart; Anjou carped and 
made merry; and Queen Jeanne had all against her on the 
point of proxy. It was agreed that young Henri ought to 
come and wed his bride. Then came the wedding gifts—all 
giving, save Jeanne. Queen Elizabeth held her jewels in 
pledge, and never gave them up—fifty thousand crowns on 
loan was the nice bargain ; but our poor Navarre queen, with 
nothing to give, reserved the right of doing so when she 
might have them to bestow. In promises and in gifts, Mar- 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI* 


57 


guerite’s dowry was regal. Then the Cardinal of Lorraine 
was despatched to Pope Pius Y. for a dispensation, on account 
of consanguinity. But Pope Pius replied that, sooner than 
grant dispensation to a heretic, he would lose his head; and 
King Charles responded in the recorded speech : “ I am not 
a Huguenot, but neither am I a fool; and if M. le Pape 
demeans himself too absurdly in this affair, I will take 
Margot by the hand, and’lead her to be married in full 
preche.” A sentiment he might have gathered from our 
Harry the Eighth and Cranmer, in the matter of the marriage 
with Anna Boleyn. 

•Catherine of Bourbon was present with her mother at 
these scenes, at which she was taken severely ill. In after 
years she had to suffer a similar wrong—blighted hopes for 
the Count of Soissons, whom she dearly loved—to marry at 
the command of her brother Henry IV., one she could not 
love, and to die of a blighted heart, yet young, in 1604. 

Now, as in the final act of a drama, the plot begins to clear 
and difficulties to unwind. Young Henri was sent for ; the 
Pope gave dispensation; and Queen Jeanne went to Paris. 
The unwonted beauty of the shops and the novelty caught 
her, and she ran about Paris with infantine avidity; was 
seized with pleurisy, and died June 9th, 1572, aged 44. 

A foolish story, extracted from l’Etoile and Davila, about the 
poison by gloves, shows the jealousy of the French to Italians. 
The French, who in cruelty were second to none, and who 
devoutly believed in magic and miracles—none more so than 
the President de Thou and the bavard l’Etoile—accuse the 
Italians of magic and poison. Accusing Italians of magic 
was a usual thing. The Duchess of Orleans was accused of 
having poisoned Charles VI., and Eleonore Concini was exe¬ 
cuted for magic, solely because they were Italian. This 
story is but one of a string, disgraceful to the Parisians and 
innocuous to the fame of the queen mother or the Italians, 


58 CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 

against whom it was only a plea for cruelty and confisca¬ 
tion. 

On the 8th July, Henri of Navarre entered Paris at the 
head of 800 cavaliers. He was met by the Princes Anjou 
and Alenin, the Duke of Guise, and the chivalry royal, 
—equal to about half the Huguenot demonstration. The 
Cardinal of Bourbon, the Prince of Auvergne (heir of Mont- 
pensier), the Duke of Nevers, the Prince of Conde, Coligni, 
Rochefoucauld, and the banished Count of Montgomery, now 
abased by the murder of the six barons massacred at Pau 
three years before. They doubled in number the royal 
cortege; it was a defiance to the Court, and it affrighted the 
royalists. They went in mourning procession to the Louvre, 
to pay homage to King Charles, the queen mother, and the 
bride. 

The marriage took place, 18th August, 1572. 

Coligni was wounded, 22nd August. 

The massacre took place, midnight, 24th August. 

We may here pause—the massacre belongs 'to another 
chapter. It is twelve years since the queen mother became 
regent, and it is nine years since Charles was declared of age, 
on the 17th August, 1563, when her regency ended and her 
“ queen mother ” began, during which time she has negociated 
three peaces with France and one with England, and always 
in favour of religious liberty, although she has been cast off 
by the Bourbons on to the Guises. It was no act or will of 
her own—the alliance with the Bourbons had been as fruitless 
as it had been unnatural, and had been productive of nothing 
but disgrace and annoyance. Antoine, Conde, Jeanne, and 
Henri her son, had proved nuisances, disgracing her Court 
with their immoralities and the realm with their rebellions. 
Marguerite is now sacrificed, but not by her mother, whose 
heart was with the Lorraines and her daughter Claude, and 
Anjou, her then victorious son. Nor was this a state of 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


59 


things which can be laid to her charge—they existed for 200 
years, from 1424 to 1628, when the Huguenots were stamped 
out by the masculine hand of Richelieu. Another Conde and 
other rebellions followed after the death of Henri IY., and 
perplexed Marie de Medici equally with the present perplexi¬ 
ties of Catherine de Medici, and whose difficulties scarcely 
differ from one another. 

Hardly two of the many commentators of this page of 
history agree; and the subsequent historians have all written 
to work out a foregone conclusion, namely, to make Henri IY. 
great and to cast odium upon the house of Yalois, especially 
upon the Italian-born queen, selected to be the victim; and 
in proportion as the task was not feasible, fiction and untruth 
are enlisted to make a bad story respectable. I will essay, 
so far as I can, to tell a plain, unvarnished tale, and put it on 
the footing on which it appears to be by the existing evidences 
—namely, a wholly unpremeditated affair, and not to be 
compared in cruelty or iniquity to many regal deeds then 
current in the world. 


—— 

CHAPTER II. 

THE DAY OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW AT PARIS. 

The Huguenots were in Paris by invitation; but they 
came in ostentatious and overpowering numbers and rebelli¬ 
ous parade—offensive to all. Coligni was there, urging 
King Charles, against his will and interests, to declare war 
with Flanders. War was a necessity with Coligni; he had 
no other means to subsist his hungry soldiers, who lived on 
rapine, and had “ no effects ” of their own. He wished to 
do as Queen Elizabeth had done, seize on their galleons and 


60 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


strike an unexpected blow upon a friendly neighbour. He 
was a rock of offence, treasonable and imperious, and be 
threatened King Charles to renew the civil war unless war 
with Spain in the Netherlands was granted to him. In the 
vacillation of Charles nothing affrighted him more than the 
opposition of his mother. “ Mon pere,” he said to Coligni, 
“ take good care that the Queen, my mother, who puts her 
nose, as you know, in everything, hears nothing of all this; 
for if she do, she will put a stop to it all.” “ As you please,” 
replied the Admiral, “ but I hold her to be so good a mother 
and so devoted to the good of your kingdoms, that when she 
shall know it, she will not oppose; besides, I find it difficult 
and inconvenient to act without her.” “ My father, you are 
mistaken,” said the king; “ let me act alone: you don’t 
know my mother ; she is the greatest marplot upon earth.” 
This conversation is taken from a worthless source, the omni¬ 
scient l’Estoile. 

In the interim, Coligni’s rebel force of 3000 men were 
worsted at Mons, with disgrace, by the Spaniards, and a great 
quarrel ensued between Coligni and his king. He told 
Charles that he would fight him, and overawed him, to the 
exclusion in his turn of the queen mother’s interference. 

It was then, and under those events, that the queen 
mother, Guise, Tavannes, and Anjou resolved upon the 
slaughter of Coligni, to free themselves from an open rebel 
and irrepressible man, who had the king in his grasp and 
against whom the unrepealed attainder of the Parliament of 
Paris was still enrolled and in full legal force. Tavannes 
was wrathful against him, on account of the presence there 
of the unknightly Montgomery, now stained with the mas¬ 
sacre of the six barons. The queen mother was offended by 
his—a banished man—reappearing in defiance. Guise remem¬ 
bered the avowal of Coligni’s accessoryship to his father’s 
murder, and all were indignant at the breach of faith with 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


61 


Spain, against treaties and their will. Urgent necessity 
drove Coligni to such rash expedients. 

The presence of Montgomery appears to have been an insolent 
and wicked bravado. He was a murderer and recreant knight, 
hateful equally to Tavannes and the queen mother. It was 
at him that King Charles shot, on the 24th August, if he did 
shoot at all,—which is very doubtful; and he suffered a felon’s 
death, excluded by name, within the year, from the capitula¬ 
tion when he was captured. Turenne, the Duke of Bouillon, 
records that, on the repulse of Coligni’s rebel force at Mons, 
the day of St. Bartholomew was resolved upon. It was at the 
first resolved that M. de Guise should kill the admiral at the 
running at the ring in the garden of the Louvre, in full pre¬ 
sence of the Court. “ I was on the side of the duke, who, we 
thought, had good understanding with the admiral; and it 
was contrived that our equipments should not be forthcoming, 
and the duke’s side did not run. The design against the 
admiral was evidently changed; for it was to endanger the 
king and his brothers, to kill whilst running at the ring, 
where four or five hundred gentlemen de la religion (Hugue¬ 
nots) were present. M. de Guise then induced one named 
Maurevel, who had killed M. de St. Phale, to draw the arque- 
buse on the admiral as he passed by the lodge of the cloister 
of St. Germain de l’Auxerrois, where a letter should be 
handed him, whilst the assassin fired. I was at my lodgings, 
seeking my equipment to run the ring, when the duke sent 
for me, and, relating the event, added, £ Quelle trahison /’ ” 

Before proceeding in this engrossing matter, it is abso¬ 
lutely needful to conjoin young Navarre and the Queen Mar¬ 
guerite, whose personal narrative aids us much in this 
history. It took place at Notre Dame, on the 18th of August. 
Coligni and Kochefoucauld were Henri’s £< best men.” There 
were difficulties to be overcome with the “de la religion” and a 
good deal of tattle has been recorded: but there is no doubt 


62 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


that the king and Queen Marguerite demeaned themselves 
royally; and the nonsense of Davila and D’Aubigne is only 
worthy of the men. The Huguenots were rude despisers of 
good manners, and insulted the Mass; but kings and queens 
cannot play the clown. Had anything of that sort occurred, 
it would have been written by many worthier and contem¬ 
porary pens. 

Now to resume the story. Coligniwas the rock of offence : 
he was treasonable, rash and unconciliatory to King Charles, 
whom he threatened with renewed rebellion if his request 
for declared war with Spain, to be carried on in the Nether¬ 
lands, was refused; who sent his 3000 troops to relieve 
Mons, where they were defeated; which drove Coligni mad, 
and he told Charles he would fight him. It was then that it 
became a necessity to be rid of the already proscribed rebel— 
and this may be accepted as the fact, that, on the 22nd 
August, the sole object sought for was the death of Coligni. 

There was the joyous feast, masque, tilt, and dance of the 
21st August recorded by Turenne; on the 22nd Coligni pressed 
the king on his war schemes, and king Charles cried out for 
“ rest and some grace.” Coligni departed rebuffed and dis¬ 
contented : when he was shot at and wounded by Maurevel, 
who escaped unseen. 

The news reached the ear of King Charles, who swore the 
volley of his blasphemous oaths and ordered the arrest of 
Guise, who fled to his hotel. The Duke of Anjou then tells 
the tale; but I do not put reliance on the truth of Anjou: 
he accepted the Catholic view, which upholds the massacre as 
an event of which to be proud, and he writes up to that 
“ foregone conclusion.” His story must be read with that 
grain of salt. He wrote : “ Our fine enterprise having failed, 
my mother and I were in a mess : the city was in an uproar; 
it was the forenoon and the authorities of Paris called out 
the arquebusiers, whilst Henri of Navarre, Conde, and 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


63 


Rochefoucauld sought the bedside of the wounded Coligni, 
who refused to quit Paris. Meantime the Huguenots, led by 
De Pilles and Segur, with 400, armed in cuirass and helm, 
sought the Louvre, demanding an audience of King Charles. 
They shouted revenge, on passing the hotels of the Guise 
princes. The Louvre was in commotion, and Charles raving 
out of his wits. He was abandoned by all the Court save the 
Duke of Retz.” 

Then to his aid Queen Catherine entered, calm and digni¬ 
fied in aspect and demeanour; the Huguenots opened their 
volley of complaint, and Charles sat astounded. The queen 
mother ordered the drawbridge of the Louvre to be lowered, 
and free ingress to be given to all, at the same time for¬ 
bidding egress to any. Anjou had entered, and counterfeited 
indignation; the queen mother shed tears. At two o’clock 
p.m., Charles, the queen mother, Anjou, and eight nobles 
visited the wounded Coligni. The king was silent and 
wrathful; but, on their meeting, Coligni instantly again 
beset him to declare war with Spain, and a very angry dis¬ 
cussion ensued. The king objected that he could not break 
his plighted word, and appealed to the queen mother, whilst 
Coligni taunted and replied insolently. They handled the 
extracted bullet, and Catherine remarked that it was well, for 
that the physicians had declared that the Duke of Guise 
would have lived had they been successful in extracting the 
bullet. On returning, they had to pass between two hundred 
lowering-browed Huguenots. Retz then proposed to transport 
Coligni to the Louvre, but the physicians forbad it. On 
returning, the record avers, that Charles spoke angrily to 
his mother and Anjou; and, returned, he shut himself up, 
vowing revenge on the aggressor, whoever he might be. 

The Huguenots beset the Louvre, nor stinted in word or 
blow, nor spared menaces on the queen mother and her sons. 
Here Marguerite, the Queen of Navarre, takes up the tale, 


64 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


and avers tliat her mother resolved to tell King Charles the 
whole truth— i. e., the slaughter of Coligni—and sent M. de 
Retz to that end. What de Retz said to the king must be 
learned at second-hand. Queen Marguerite says he pointed 
out the dangers in which he stood from Guizards and Hugue¬ 
nots, and that the Guises were then summoned to the Louvre 
at midnight— i. e ., 23rd—and that the queen mother, Anjou, 
Guise, de Nevers, Tavannes, and the chancellor, then met in 
conclave with the king, and that the queen mother stated the 
case, and instanced the following points :—the Huguenot 
conspiracies; the religious troubles; Coligni’s efforts to 
embroil France with Spain; denouncing his audacity; the 
strength of the army of the Huguenots; the 10,000 German 
reiters; the wearied nobility; the degraded throne; that 
all these mischiefs would disappear with Coligni, who was 
their author, and fostered them. The Duke of Anjou states 
that Charles burst into a rage, and swore that the admiral 
should not be harmed: that he, the Duke of Anjou, spoke 
recommending the murder ; and de Retz spoke on the 
opposite side; and that Charles, maddened by opposing 
taunts and propositions, suddenly declared that all the 
Huguenots should die, and that he bade Anjou and the 
queen mother see to it and have it done, and that Anjou and 
Guise then conferred together for an hour (therefore it was 
then 2 or 3 o’clock on the morning of the 23rd): and it is 
stated that the queen mother retired to superintend the 
despatch of missives to the provinces. 

Every word of this is unproven or contradicted. The son 
of Tavannes utterly denies it for his father. The idea of the 
queen retiring to write despatches is very like our old 
nursery rhyme,— 

“ The king was in his counting-house, counting out his 
money; 

The queen was in the garden eating bread and honey.” 


CATHERINE HE MEDICI. 


65 


Despatches are sent by ministers, with formalities of seals, 
signatures, and counter signatures, and messengers. But 
no such documents exist, and never existed, save in fiction. 
Rumour carried the story ‘ of events to Meaux, Orleans, 
Lyons, and Rouen, where the like scenes of slaughter 
occurred from the like motive cause—retaliation and reli¬ 
gious zeal—and not from letters from Paris, which do not 
exist, and assuredly would have been enrolled in the pro¬ 
vincial archives. 

There is a famous letter, attributed to the Viscount of 
Orthez, Governor of Bayonne, in presumed reply to the 
royal command, and given by Voltaire, that “ the garrison of 
Bayonne possessed citizens and soldiers, but no hangmen,” 
is pronounced by Capefigue, as he writes in his history 
that indisputably it is a fiction. “ I say positively that the 
letter of the Viscount of Orthez, cited by Voltaire, is a 
fiction; which is also evident, from its style, similar to the 
philosophical protocols of the age of Louis XIV.” (vol. xix., 
p. 177). But further, although these presumed circulars 
have no existence, we find circulars extant from the king, 
dated the 24th August, to Joyeuse, in Languedoc, com¬ 
manding him “ to keep the peace and observe my edicts of 
pacification.” The reader may be assured that no such 
despatches were sent, or could be sent by the Court. It 
is solely a manufactured page of libellous matter, without 
any proof and without any probability. 

It is reasonable to believe that, after midnight of the 22nd, 
the court sought repose. The next day, Saturday the 23rd, 
-was free from hostilities—it was one of inaction : the Queen 
of Navarre, and the Duchess of Nevers, and another lady, 
visited the admiral. We have likewise many unreliable 
private conversations between the king and queen mother, 
all tending to cast obloquy on the queen mother, all made- 
up dialogues not professed to have been heard. Henry of 

F 


66 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Anjou and liis illegitimate brother, Henri of Angouleme, 
drove together in a coach through the streets of Paris, 
amidst the excited populace. The provost visited the queen 
mother, and measures were taken for the city’s peace and 
safety. The provost then saw the Duke of Guise, who 
commanded him to assemble, at midnight, the captains and 
tithing-men of Paris, at the Hotel de Ville, “ as he had to 
communicate to them some new and secret counsel from the 
king, their lord.” And here, methinks, we stand upon more 
open and intelligible ground; that the respite of one day was 
to call Paris together on the anniversary of the slaughter of 
their co-religionists in Bearn : and that they sallied forth on 
the 24th August with the cry of “ The Mass or death,” 
following the old Saracen cry of the “ Koran or deathand 
in its sequent order we may now take the murder of the 
Admiral Coligni. 

We cannot do better than follow the description given by 
Queen Marguerite, which is written in the best good faith , 
upon the spot, and with as good intelligence of passing 
events as any possessed. She informs us that at midnight, 
of the 23rd August, the queen mother and the Duchess of 
Nemours rose and visited the vacillating king, fearing a 
sudden gyration of his mind, but that he was raving “ Death 
to the admiral and the disturbers of his peace! ” There were 
present (as Queen Marguerite believed) the Dukes of Guise, 
of Nevers ; Birague, the chancellor; Tavannes, the marshal; 
and de Eetz. The murder of the admiral was committed to 
the Duke of Guise, the Duke d’Aumale, and Henri d’Angou¬ 
leme, whilst the command of the troops was given to the 
Duke d’Anjou. Guise visited the Hotel de Ville At mid¬ 
night, and prepared the captains and the tithing-men; who, 
be it again remarked, until then were ignorant of what was 
on foot. He then returned to the Louvre, and the tocsin, 
which was to be the signal for action, was sounded. This 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


G7 


tocsin was sounded against the overwhelming numbers of 
Huguenots in Paris : it was precautionary. That occurred at 
2 o’clock of the morning of the 24th from the Church of St. 
Germain, and the abode of the admiral w*as then beset. He 
was not indiscriminately murdered. Besme, the servant of 
Guise, demanded of him if he was the admiral? “I am, 
young man : you ought to have respected my grey hairs; but 
you shorten my life only by a few days or hours.” Besme 
then smote him, exclaiming, “ Traitor! this for the blood of 
my late lord and master, Guise, whom you did so traitorously 
murder—die! ” Then follows a melodramatic scene. Guise 
below, in the street, asked if the deed was done, which, 
being answered in the affirmative, he said, “ Le Chevalier 
(Henri d’Angouleme) cannot believe it: throw the body out 
of window; ” which was done, and Guise, gazing in silence 
on the corpse, wiped the blood from the mouth, and said, 
“ Yes, it is he.” And, mounting his horse, he led his men 
where Caumont, Francour, Montamar, Bouvrez, and others 
were slain, and Pare, the surgeon, was led by a party of 
royal archers as prisoner back to the Louvre. 

We here have a perplexing account by Anjou, that at 
daybreak, a quarter past 4, the king and the queen mother 
were on the portico of the Louvre ; Henri of Navarre had 
risen to finish a game of tennis before the lever of the king; 
and that the queen mother sent de Nevers, who was attending 
on her that night, to find Guise and to stop the slaughter, 
and to forbid him to approach the abode of the admiral. 
Anjou remarking thereupon, “ This command contravened 
all that we had been ordered, because it had been determined 
that no Huguenot should be molested until M. l’Amiral was 
dead.” The Duke of Guise answered to the summons, but 
reported that the admiral was already dead. 

With the death of the admiral* and those already named, 
we find all the royal party reassembled at the Louvre. We 

f 2 


68 


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find that Anjou with his archers had returned with their 
prisoner Pare, and that Guise had obeyed the recall. Who 
then perpetrated the massacre ? Who let slip the dogs of 
revenge ? Who were they ? The answer is very plain: they 
were the captains of Paris, the priests from the convents and 
the exasperated populace, revenging on the morning of the 
St. Bartholomew at Paris the slaughter of the St. Bartho¬ 
lomew, three years prior at Pau.* 

There, in cold blood, had the Catholics been hurled into 
the Gave, and there had Montgomery murdered the six capi¬ 
tulated barons. And, as by a signal retribution, six names 
are recorded of victims who fell in the Louvre : Montauban, 
Segur, St. Martin, Pilles, Soubise and Bourse—six for six— 
whilst, at the same time, Henri of Navarre and the Prince 
of Conde were ushered into the presence of King Charles : 
who reproached them as the cause of the civil wars which 
had been the curse of his reign, and commahded them to 
convert to the true faith. And with respect to the imaginary 
conversations which each historian chooses to record as au¬ 
thentic, they are purely imaginary and dramatic. We only 
know the result: which was, that one by one they converted 
the Dowager Duchess of Conde, Frances of Orleans; the 
Princess of Conde, Marie of Cleves; the princes of Conde 
and Conti, the Count of Soissons, and, lastly, Henri of 
Navarre himself; who all took the Mass as the alternative 
for their lives. 

Queen Marguerite now gives us a piece of good evidence 


* They were, moreover, all those who then, before then, and since, 
had feuds with their neighbours; and when the fiend of rebellion was on 
foot murdered those to whom they were indebted or held in hatred. It 
is an oft-told but over-true tale, existing equally in 1871 as in 1571. 
The red republican told the ‘Times’ correspondent that he would 
accept a musket, but the first use he would make of it would be to 
shoot his landlord. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


69 


of that which really occurred to herself. She records that 
Navarre her husband rose at daybreak to play a game of 
tennis before the lever of the king. She had slept an hour 
from his leaving her side (which would he about 4 o’clock), 
when she was awoke by cries of “ Navarre! ” with hurtling 
at the door. Her waiting-lady opened it, and a wounded 
gentleman, Gaston de Levis, entered, followed by four archers 
of the guard—he threw himself on her bed and clasped her 
fast. “ I knew not,” she writes, “ whether it was he or I 
they wished to kill; I threw myself out of bed on the floor, 
he continuing to grasp me round the body. M. de Nancy, 
captain of the guard, then, by the mercy of God, entered: 
he commiserated my position and reprimanded the archers, 
and made them go out of the room ; hut could not refrain 
from laughter whilst he granted me the life of the poor 
man. M. de Nancy told me my husband was safe with the 
king; he then took me to the room of my sister Claude, 
Mme. de Lorraine, more dead than alive.” And she relates 
how in the way there she witnessed the murder of Bourse, 
already named, pierced by a halberd. “ I fell, almost fainting, 
into the arms of M. de Nancy, and entered safely the little 
cabinet where my sister slept.” 

Here we find an infuriated soldiery on the day of St. Bar¬ 
tholomew avenging their murdered comrades, slain by order 
of Jeanne of Navarre; but the captain of the guard aided 
Queen Marguerite to save the wounded man. And, I think, we 
may safely aver that six was the whole number slain in the 
Louvre, and that was by the act of the soldiery alone—not 
of their captain or of the king. These bodies were said to 
have been laid out naked, and that the maids of honour in¬ 
vestigated them, walking around. This is a plain falsehood ; 
but it fixes the number at the six named, and they are named 
over and over again in the histories. The reader must 
remember that neither were the sleeping apartments or the 


70 


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niglit attire the same then as to-day, but were equally fitted to 
receive the world as the other salons—they were boudoirs. 

We will now relate Sully’s personal adventures as they 
occurred to him. 

“ I was in bed, and awaked from sleep three hours after 
midnight, by the sound of all the bells and the confused cries 
of the populace. My governor St. Julian and my valet went 
out to learn the cause; and, as I never after beheld them, with¬ 
out doubt they were sacrificed to public fury. I was alone, 
dressing myself, when my landlord entered, pale and in con¬ 
sternation. He was of the reformed religion, and having 
heard what the matter was, had agreed to go to Mass and 
save his life, and preserve his house from pillage. He came 
to persuade me to do the like, and to take me with him. I 
did not think proper to follow him, but resolved to try to 
gain the College of Burgundy, where I had studied. I 
disguised myself in a scholar’s gown, I put a large Prayer- 
book beneath my arm, and went into the street. I was seized 
with inexpressible horror at the sight of the furious mur¬ 
derers, who, running from all parts, forced open the houses, 
crying, ‘ Kill, kill! massacre the Huguenots ! ” The blood 
which I saw shed redoubled my terror. I fell into the midst 
of a body of guards. They stopped me, interrogated me, and 
were beginning to use me ill, when, happily for me, the book 
that I carried served me for a passport. Twice after this I 
fell into the like danger, and extricated myself by the like 
good fortune. I reached the College of Burgundy, where a 
greater danger awaited me. The porter twice refused me 
admittance, and I stood' in the street at the mercy of the 
murderers, whose numbers increased, and who sought eagerly 
for prey, when it occurred to me to ask for La Faye, the 
principal of the college, a good man, by whom I was tenderly 
beloved. The porter, bribed by some small coin, admitted 
me, and my friend took me to his room, where two inhuman 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


71 


priests, whom I heard mention Sicilian Vespers, wanted to 
force me from him, that they might cut me in pieces, saying 
the order was not to spare the infant at the breast. All the 
good man could do was to lock me up in a distant chamber, 
where I remained three days, uncertain of my doom, and saw 
no one save the servant of my friend, who brought me food. 

“ At the end of three days, the prohibition to murder or 
pillage Protestants any more having been published, I was 
suffered to leave my cell; and immediately after, I saw Ferriere 
and La Yieville, two soldiers of the guard who were my 
father’s creatures, enter the college. They were armed, and 
came without doubt to rescue me by force wherever they 
should find me. They communicated with my father; and 
eight days after, I had a letter from him, expressing the fears 
he had had for me, and advising me to continue with the prince 
whom I served, and, if necessary, to follow his example, and 
go to Mass; for, in effect, he had found no other means of 
saving his life. He and the Prince of Conde were awakened 
two hours before day by soldiers in the Louvre, and inso¬ 
lently commanded to dress and attend the king; nor would 
they suffer them to take their swords. As they went, they 
saw several of their gentlemen massacred (the six already 
named). The king received them with eyes and face of fury 
and oaths and blasphemies, ordering them to quit a religion 
assumed as a cloak for rebellion; and, when they demurred, 
he added, in a fierce and haughty tone, that he would not be 
contradicted in his opinions by his subjects; that their 
example should teach others to revere him as the image of 
God, and cease to be enemies to the images of His Mother, 
and that if they did not go to Mass he would treat them 
as criminals guilty of treason against divine and human 
majesty.” 

This relation by Sully, written in after years, jumbles 
what occurred to his eyes with what he afterwards heard; 


72 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


but we see tbe like story repeated—the slaughter was not 
indiscriminate. He lost his valet and tutor; but his host, he 
himself, and his father Rosny escaped. The bias of Sully 
was strongly against the queen mother; and he rhapsodizes 
that he prefers to obliterate the day than to record it, for it 
was succeeded by the Divine vengeance that lasted twenty- 
six years. 

So Jeanne of Navarre had made it death to her subjects to 
mention the St. Bartholomew of 1569 within her realms. 
And so should we be glad to obliterate the ten years of con¬ 
temporary slaughter and the names of Clandeboy and Sur- 
leyboy, of St. Mary wick (Smerwick), at each of which we 
slaughtered in the coldest blood, man, woman, and child, six 
hundred, on the sanctuary isle of Ratlilin ; six hundred 
Spaniards, prisoners of war at Smerwick—and raided, hanged, 
slaughtered, and burnt out the Irish realm for the space of ten 
years—until we “ made a solitude and called it peacebut the 
licenses we permit to ourselves and Protestant party, we 
visit as enormities on the other side. As the Boeotian said 
to the Athenian, “You may abuse Hercules, and we may 
abuse Theseus,” so we claim the right to ignore our bonfires, 
and only to view those of the other side. 

As Sully escaped, so did his fellow religionist—the “fidus 
Achates” of the ‘Henriade’—Duplessis Mornay, equally 
escape, as related by the hand of his wife, in his Memoires. 
He was lodged in the rue St. Jacques, Compas d’Or, attending 
on the admiral. He was awakened by a German at 5 o’clock 
on the Sunday morning; his host Poret—a Catholic but 
“ man of conscience ”—aids him to burn papers, and to hide 
on the roof. He also assisted him to escape; he took his 
sword and a black dress, and made for a Huyssier, Gerard, 
who likewise assists him : he escaped by the Porte St. Denis, 
and passed, by a falsehood or two, two parties of the massa- 
crants, who nevertheless let him pass, and so he continued 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


73 


to pass through all his difficulties, because he was not be¬ 
trayed by any one. Amidst his adventures the Baron of 
Montenay offered to procure him a passport from M. de 
Guise, to go where he would. But Mornay refused to owe 
his life to Catholics, and trusted in God to find him a pass 
out of France. * He gained Dieppe, where two more persons, 
M. d’Auberville and the Capitaine Montint, aided him to 
escape to England. 

The Duke of Bouillon (Turenne) writes, “ Sunday, the 
24th, saw the detestable and horrible day of massacre upon 
those of the religion, but God led me by the hand, that I 
was neither massacred nor a massacreer.” He says, though 
he was neither slain or slayer it bound him to their side, 
although he had no knowledge of their belief at that time. 

The Duke de Rochefoucauld, who fell slain in the Louvre, 
had a servant, “De Mcrgey,” who has left his Memoires, too long 
to be verbatim inserted, but of which this is a precis: “ M. lo 
comte, according to custom, stayed the last in the chamber of 
the king, and Chaumont and myself in waiting, hearing the 
shuffling of the feet of the making the reverence, got near the 
door, and heard the king say, c Foucault, it is late ; let us keep 
it up all night.’ £ Nay,’ said he; ‘ needs go to bed and sleep.’ 

‘ Well, go and sleep with my valets de chambre.’ ‘ Not I,’ 
replied he; and he visited the dowager princess of Conde, 
whom he courted, and stayed there an hour; thence to the 
room of the King of Navarre, and, after parting with him, he 
came out to go away, when a man in black addressed him, 
and, drawing him aside, spoke for a while, and then retired. 
M. le comte called me, and bade me go to the room of the 
King of Navarre, and tell him that M. de Guise and M. de 
Nevers were in the city and slept at the Louvre. I obeyed, 
and found him in bed with the queen his wife; and having 
whispered in his ear what I was bidden, he bade me say that 
he would keep early tryst, as he had promised. Returning, I 


74 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


found at the foot of the staircase M. de Nancey, captain of 
the guards, which hindered me from delivering the message 
of the King of Navarre. For the king (Charles) had adver¬ 
tized the King of Navarre to detain near him all the gentle¬ 
men he could, as he feared that those of Guise were after 
something; therefore many gentlemen retired to the garde- 
robe of the King of Navarre, closed only by tapestry. M. de 
Nancey, raising the tapestry, putting in his head and seeing 
the garde-robe full, some playing, some chatting, I saw 
him looking and contant by the head, and saying : ‘Messieurs, 
if you mean to go, we are about to shut the door-portal.’ 
They replied that they meant to stay the night, being engaged 
in play; whereupon M. le comte and he descended to the 
court, where the companies of guards were in rank, Swiss, 
Scots, and French—to the portal, where was M. de Ram- 
bouillet, who had been my fellow prisoner in Flanders, who 
pressed my hand, saying sadly, ‘ A Dieu, M. de Mergey, mon 
ami.’ He knew the impending execution, but he knew not 
that he was to fall. 

“ M. le comte being in his badly-furnished room, we 
(Chaumont and I), wished to remain; but he would not 
permit it. The Sieur de Coulaines remained, and brought 
him a paillasse and mattrass. Chaumont and I went to our 
lodging vis-a-vis the admiral. We were only in bed, when we 
heard the alarm and the lodging of M. l’Amiral attacked by 
the corps-de-garde there posted to defend him. I tumbled 
out of bed, and dressed as quickly as I could : Chaumont was 
so astonished that he remained en chemise until I made him 
dress. I was going forth to seek M. le comte : he stopped me, 
and bade me wait and see the issue. We were in the great lodge 
of the princess of Conde, but separated. Hearing the tumult, 
I put my head out of window, looking into a court of the 
lodge of M. l’amiral; and, seeing in the court two men— 
Huguenots, and officers of the princess—and recognising one, 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


75 


I prayed him to put up a plank; by which we descended to 
the court, Chaumont following. I greatly wanted to hear 
tidings of M. le comte, and which was the sleeping-room 
of Mad. la princesse, and asked one named Le Lorraine to go 
and learn what was passing, who, when out in the street, 
and not being in the livery of the actors there (which 
was a white cross on hats and arms), was near being killed, 
if he had not avowed himself the servant of Mad. the 
princess. I made him crosses of paper for hat and arms, 
and offered him two crowns to try again. He returned 
quickly and told me M. le comte was saved, but could not 
say how. For two more crowns, he went again, and, 
returning, told me that he was dead; that he had seen him 
dead in the street, together with his son and a great red man. 

I knew that his son was elsewhere, &c. 

“ But the admiral was slain in his room, and cast from the 
window to the court, where was M. de Guise on horseback, 
who, having seen and recognised him, departed with his 
horse to follow the Huguenots lodged in the Faubourg 
St. Germain. (He returned, in fact, straight to the Louvre.) 
I was in the court listening as the cavalry followed M. de 
Guise. Passing the gate, one demanded, ‘ Who lodges 
within ? ’ We answered, £ Followers of Madame la princesse.’ 
They replied, £ We want nothing there.’ Which I was 
very glad to hear, and entered in the lodge, when the 
owner soon came, who was the capitaine du quartier and 
came from the execution; who, knowing whom we were, 
said he was sorry for the disaster, which he disapproved, 
and that he would aid us all he could; but that the ordi¬ 
nance was that all lodges were to be visited by deputations, 
and if we were found in his house he would be the sufferer; 
but if we would, he would lead us to the church of St. 
Thomas du Louvre, from whence we might save ourselves. 
I thanked him cordially, and entreated him, that as God had 



76 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


so far preserved us, that he would not put a stop to it, and I 
felt assured that he would incur no trouble on our account: 
he promised, and went off. We not desiring to remain, and 
having heard that M. de Marcillac (son of Rochefoucauld) had 
escaped, and that M. de la Coste, his tutor, had led him 
safely to M. de Lausac, in the rue St. Honore, I sent my 
valet Yivat to entreat him to receive me too; but the porter 
refused him admittance.” With a little management and 
lying, the porter was overcome, and Yivat met none but 
friends, who led him to Rochefoucauld with tidings of De 
Mergey, which rejoiced all parties. He had, he says, “another 
string to his bow, M. de Sesac, lieutenant of M. de Guise, a 
connection of mine by marriage. M. de Sesac was reposing 
after a chace after Montgomery, who had saved himself—who 
replied to Yivat, ‘ Tell him, as he loves his life, to stay where 
he is; and in the evening, I will send and seek him.’ And he 
sent; but I was then with M. le comte, led thither by M. de 
la Rochette, who found me out and said roughly and me¬ 
nacing, c Allons !’ and nothing more. I, in dread, made him a 
low and profound reverence, when, with a voice of rodomant. 
he said again ‘ Allons , allons !’ I said $ Let me get my sword/ 
4 Oui-da,’ said he, ‘ Do you wish to fight ? * ‘ With all my 

heart,’ said I. ‘ Come on, come on ; M. le comte wants you/ 
I made him a gladder and deeper reverence, took my sword 
and a halberd —for he had six or seven companions—and we 
sought M. le comte,* who cast him on my neck, and held me 
in a long embrace, neither of us speaking save by sobs. I 
stayed with him fifteen days, and recovered his equipage of 
silver services, and buffet, and likewise the horses which 
were at Yillepreux. The king made all the caresses du monde 
to M. le comte, and talked familiarly with him, but advised 

* The Count referred to was the son of Rochefoucauld, become the 
Count by his father’s death. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


77 


him to dismiss his followers of the religion. Therefore La 
Coste and I, with a passport from the king and a safeguard 
of our own, returned to Anjoumois, taking with us all the 
train of the late count, and we rejoined M. de Marmontier.” 

This story of the Marshal Tavannes only rests on the 
relation of Brantome, who, thinking to do him grace by 
conjoining his name with the day of reprisal, wrote : “ M. de 
Tavannes —comme on dit —this day showed himself cruelly, 
promenading all day through the town, and seeing the blood 
flow, he cried to the people, ‘ Saignez, saignez ! the doctors 
say bleeding is good in August as in May! * And of all these 
poor souls he saved none save that of the Sieur la Neufville, 
a valiant gentleman, whom I had seen formerly follow M. 
Dandelot, and since in the service of Monsieur, whom he 
served well with pen and sword, good at both. This gentil- 
homme had fallen in the hands of the maddened populace, 
and had received five or six sabre cuts, and was nearly spent, 
when he perceived M. de Tavannes, to whom he ran, and 
holding by his knees, said, ‘ Ah, Monsieur, have pity on me, 
and, as you are great, be pitiful.’ M. de Tavannes, either 
from compassion, or that it did not tend to his honour to kill 
this poor gentilhomme on his knees, saved him and had him 
attended to.” 

Brantome then prattles on touching the old marshal, and 
feigns him to tell the king, who was doubtful of the result, 
that he would take Rochelle and Montauban, Nismes and 
Sommieres—one after the other; “so King Picrocole, of 
Rabellais, promised to do: so the milkmaiden dreamed ere 
upsetting her can of milk: for ah! he fell ill at Chartr^ 
sous Montlery, and there died.” He adds M. l’Amiral was 
his contemporanian, and, one time, companion, although M. 
de Tavannes was older than he, and they had played the fool 
together at Court. But Tavannes surpassed Coligni; he 
would mount the roofs of houses and leap from street to 


78 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


street from the tiles. These two great captains both bore 
the name of Gaspard—Gaspard de Coligni and Gaspard de 
Saux—but the admiral surpassed Tavannes in after years, 
tor he rolled larger and heavier stones than did the other. 
This is what was said of them. It is this bavardism which 
young Tavannes probably thought it right to contradict in 
his Memoires. In fact, Brantome has in his zeal libelled the 
old marshal, who was truly on the point of death from age, 
and perhaps from sorrow and woe. 

Brantome has also, in his manner, given a history of the 
St. Bartholomew in his 4 Charles IX.; ’ but commences his 
story by saying that it was told after so many manners that 
one knew not what to believe. And although Brantome be 
truly, as Mr. Froude says of him, worthless for his opinion, 
yet he is good as a witness: he was apparently *away from 
Court with the army, and gives hearsay; but too many of 
the fadezes may be traced to his trash. The harquebuse story 
originates in him; the hanging of Coligni by the feet, but 
no word of the head having been carried to the Louvre. 
That Charles attended the execution of Briquemault and 
Cavagnes, condemned by process of law, for which he was 
blamed as cruel; but he had this rebellion so strong a 
contrecceur that he said and held that cruelty to the rebels 
was humanity to mankind. His reply to the queen mother 
touching the capture of Montgomery is there. That wretched 
mockery, the story of Nostradamus having predicted that all 
Queen Catherine’s children should be kings is there; perhaps, 
the original version of that which came so untrue, in fact, 
a»d miserable so far as it went. In this relation of the 
massacre, in the righteousness of which Brantome fully 
concurs, the queen mother plays no part whatever. The 
king, himself, follows his own headlong passion, roused by 
Betz and Tavannes, disagreeing with both Queen Marguerite 
and Anjou in regard to them. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


79 


Brantome gives another version in his notice (M. de 
Strozze) of M. de Cossains, who had been a chief actor, so 
that some called him the principal butcher, who was compere, 
by right of his wife, with Brantome, when the king opened 
the enterprise to Cossains. The latter demurred the diffi¬ 
culty and impossibility, with so few, to grapple with the 
great number of Huguenots then in Paris ; but the king 
having detailed his “means and intelligences,” he entered 
so warmly into the matter that he won the appellation of 
Boucher: but before Rochelle remorse seized him, and truly 
there he was wounded and died. 

The younger Tavannes has written an account of this day ;* 
but in long after years, when he wrote that, by the voice of 
his father, “ Ce grand roy Henri Quatrieme regnant aujour- 
d’hui, and the late Prince of Conde saved their lives, and it 
is an unhappiness to his children that his Majesty is ignorant 
of that truth,” he writes : “ I saved La Neufville, Bethunes, 
Baignac, and aided La Verdin. The Sieur de Tavannes, his 
father, saved the Marechal de Biron, suspected, without 
cause, to favour the Huguenots, but advising him to refuge 
in the arsenal. The bloodshed ceased—the pillage com¬ 
menced. His father, Tavannes alone had clean hands, and 
took nothing: the men of M. d’Anjou pillaged the pearls of 
the stranger (les perles des etr angers.) Paris resembled a 
conquered town, to the regret of the Council, who had 
only resolved on the death of the chefs et factieux. M. de 
Guise followed Montgomery in vain; Montmorency and 

* This young gentleman, at the early age of sixteen—he does not 
write where it was—had given a soufflet to St. Jean de Montgomery 
in the king’s presence: he had received a dementi from him. As they 
drew their swords they were separated, and they were pardoned by the 
favour of his father with the king. Nevertheless, Montgomery, touched 
in his chivalry, called him to meet him in Italy. “ Death called him, 
and saved me from that courvee— disgrace; ” is his remark. 


80 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Dampville avoided peril. The Sieur of Tavannes divided 
the city into districts, committed to many hands to stop 
slaughter and pillage. Briquemault and Cavagnes, taken, 
were hung in the Place de Greve. I saw at my father’s 
house the papers of the admiral, their requisitions of money, 
their watchword, and levies of men. The white thorn blos¬ 
somed, a star appeared—all attributed to miracles. It was 
the truth, the Huguenots were themselves the sole cause of 
their massacre—putting the king perforce to war with Spain, 
or with them.” These remarks were written in after years, 
and are mingled with much which is so incorrect that it is 
evidently penned considerably from public reports and very 
untrusty. 

Montluc is a contemporary authority. He was cashiered 
in 1569 for his ill-success in Bearn against Montgomery, 
and he wrote his memoirs in exculpation of himself: which 
accounts for their ending with 1570. But he reopens them 
to give his account of the St. Bartholomew, of which the 
queen mother had sent the veteran an account, an instance, 
methinks, of her goodness of heart. 

“ I thought to have made an end of my writings with my_ 
career, for no more is it given to me to mount steed or draw 
sword. All France enjoyed a time of peace and repose. 
I, only, afflicted by maladies and my wound, was oftenest in 
bed, but I heard from my friends at Court of the friendship 
dealt to the Huguenots. It appeared to me that the Hugue¬ 
nots became more insolent and spoke as loudly as ever.” 
In 1572, he adds “a year hardly passed and news comes to 
me of St. Bartholomew in Paris, where M. l’Amiral was so ill- 
advised to go to light a blaze (enfourner) to show that he 
governed all. I was astonished that a man so wise and 
capable in affairs could commit so gross a fault, for which he 
has so dearly paid with his own life and that of many 
others. He had cast the realm into great trouble, for I know 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


81 


right well that all did not emanate from the Prince of Conde, 
no, nor the half. That prince had so much communication 
with me at Poissy, and, if I had suffered it, he would have 
turned me inside out. I informed the queen, and she bade 
me to be silent; she did not think then that matters would 
flow as they did. We all know well that she has been 
accused of having originated these troubles; and M. le 
Prince did her the wrong to send his letters to Germany 
and print and publish them, by which he did not do himself 
much good. The queen, being at Toulouse, did me the 
honour to confer with me for three hours on that matter, on 
which I will be silent, for it is but too easy to cavil and find 
fault with those who have the management of affairs, espe¬ 
cially those mighty as she had on her hands; the king and 
his brothers all so young, the princes banded one against 
the other, now advancing or falling back, with the beau 
manteau of religion to cloak their revenges and slaughters. 
I entreat you what appearance was there that she was in 
intelligence with that prince (Conde), whatever she had done 
since in proof to the contrary ? I return to my subject. 

“ All the world was astonished to learn these occurrences 
at Paris ; the Huguenots most of all. For myself, I could not 
conceive why they began by only wounding the admiral, if 
they had the design which followed after. For if on the 
morrow all their grands had conjoined the Huguenots there, 
they could have quitted Paris and gone where they chose. 
I do not wish to meddle with that matter as to whether it was 
right or wrong, those who come after me will be able better 
to judge, and to speak without fear, which we cannot do 
now. 

“ The queen did me the honour to write to me, and 
informed me they had discovered a great conspiracy against 
the king and state, which had been the cause of that which 
followed.” 

G 


82 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


This appears to have been so honestly written by a 
retired veteran that it deserves transcribing, as also a senti¬ 
ment at the commencement of his memoirs, in which, 
recording his poverty, and no pay, of his soldier youth time, 
he remarks that, “ in your duty, nothing wiU lack to you: has 
it not been a hundred times better to me that I have 
followed my kings and masters in all loyalty than to have 
lived by larceny, to have been able at all times to walk with 
my head up than they and their children with heads down. 
One reward from the king is worth all you can win by 
larcenies.” 

The Seigneur St. Auban has left memoirs and his account 
of that disastrous day. He also was in attendance upon 
Coligni, and was by his side when he was wounded by Mau- 
revel. He was taken prisoner by the Prevost de la Mardeille, 
He saw people poniarded, but he himself was only collared, 
not once, but thrice. “ Three times I was taken, and three 
times left, and I remained in incertitude of my life for fifteen 
weeks.” He thinks they sought for evidence to accuse him 
of the enterprise at Amboise; he was imprisoned in the 
Conciergerie, and released when no one accused him. Re¬ 
leased, he sought his home in Dauphine.— Petitot , 43-439. 

On the contrary, Briquemaud and Cavannes were two 
who were tried, and condemned, and hung on the 25th 
October by process of law. 

The escape of the child Caumont, afterwards a marshal, 
is assuredly another instance, not of accident, but repugnance 
to kill a child. The different versions of his father’s death 
and of his escape are melodramatic and absurd. 

There was yet another source of slaughter proper to Paris 
from her earliest days to the present—private revenge. The 
Catholics filled Paris with slaughter, “ many to avenge 
their private quarrels poniarded Catholics. Debtors took 
such opportunities to massacre their creditors, tenants their 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


83 


landlords, and workmen tlieir masters.” The plunder of 
1790, and the decree of the Assembly legalizing its acquisi¬ 
tion, has left ineffaceable impressions upon the Gaul of his 
right to covet and appropriate his neighbour’s goods. 1791 
and 1871 will bear witness to that. How many fall in que - 
relies particulieres history sayeth not. 

Another wonderful story is related by d’Aubigne, the escape 
of Eenier of Quercy, who was saved and pardoned by his 
personal enemy, de Yezius, the king’s lieutenant at Quercy; 
but the tales are too absurd to transcribe. Sheer nursery- 
tales of the escape of their sires related to their children, 
and afterwards incorporated among historic facts. 

The reader will perceive that in all these relations there 
is no evidence whatever of indiscriminate slaughter, nor 
of demoniac cruelty and mutilation, but that every one of 
these instances of personal adventures, of which we may be 
assured the most, and not the least, is made, that they all 
were questioned, and they aU escape, meeting with friends 
unnumbered to aid, and with foes slow and unwilling to kill. 
We find Sully and his father Eosny, Mornay, and D’Auban 
all aided and assisted to escape. After the murder of Coligni, 
we find Guise, Anjou and the Archers all return to the Louvre 
immediately. At the Louvre we find six gentlemen, whose 
bodies were laid out in state for the ladies of honour to be¬ 
hold, and the story is related evidently by some penny-a- 
liner and bears its own refutation on the face—nothing of 
the kind occurred, and how historians can insert such filth 
in their pages is wonderful. The ladies in attendance did 
not walk around six naked corpses ; but it proves this, that 
six was the extent of the slaughter in the Louvre, and that 
it was done by the Archers against their captain’s leave, who 
laughed at Queen Marguerite caught captive by a Huguenot 
gentleman. 

Young Tavannes makes a most true remark: that had the 

g 2 


84 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


massacre of St. Bartholomew been premeditated, it would 
have failed. It was simply that it was unpremeditated that 
it succeeded against the dominant Huguenots. 

It was the populace—the Parisian populace, unhappily 
but too renowned for rapine, cruelty and blood, both before 
and subsequently to 1572—who ran wild in that orgie which 
we have selected as our lay figure of all that is horrible. 
The most that we can safely accept is that Guise obtained 
the consent of the Court and the king to Coligni’s death; 
and that he delayed the murder a day in order to let it faU 
on the anniversary of the massacre at Pau, for which pur¬ 
pose he assembled the Parisian authorities at midnight of 
the 23rd, at the Hotel de Ville: when “ the hand that 
kindles cannot quench the flame,” the priests and populace 
rushed out and massacred; and the war cry of St. Bartho¬ 
lomew was heard again in Paris in 1792, when the reformed 
religionists of the south revenged on the priests, imprisoned 
aux Carmes du Luxembourg, to the number of 8000, and 
four days’ massacre—the four times repeated miseries of this 
date. God grant that may be the last of Parisian massacres! 
I would further point out that in all the histories we have 
detailed there is no show of cruelty, mutilation, or anything 
save poniarding and halberding. 

We are told that the head of Coligni was cut off and 
carried to the king and queen mother.. The letters written 
by both from the 24th to the 27th sufficiently deny and 
belie the statement; that Charles visited the body hung on 
Montmartre, and quoted that “ the scent of a foeman was 
ever sweet,” these are vile and filthy calumnies worthy of 
Voltaire:— 

“ Medicis la re<jut avec indifference,” 

Sans paraitre jouir du fruit de sa vengeance, 

Sans remords, sans plaisir, maitresse de ses sens, 

Et comme accoutumee a des pareils presens.” 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


85 


There is no great difficulty in reconciling this garbled 
statement with the true facts, which we can do from the de¬ 
cree of the Parliament of Paris a month later, October 29th, 
decreeing that the sentence should be executed if the body 
could be found (“ si trouver se peut ”); and in the contrary 
cases it was done in effigy, in order to mark and justify the 
sequent proceedings on execution for high treason. The 
execution in effigy of the 29 th Oct. has been attributed to 
the 25th Sept. There are many statements in history with 
greater misstatements of facts, but the decree of the parlia¬ 
ment in October is wholly inconsistent with the statement 
that it had really occurred in September. 

The will and papers of Coligni were carried to the Court, 
amongst which was a paper admonishing the king to beware 
of his brother “Anjou,—a very unnecessary admonishment, 
since the two brothers hated one another reciprocally. 
With respect to Coligni, he lies buried at Chatillon, and his 
grave has been visited, and his head is not dissevered from 
his body; and the whole of the Montmartre interlude may 
be rejected as utterly untrue. 

Again, Did Tavannes—the hero of Jarnac and the marshal 
of France, who had refused to capture Conde in an unmar - 
tial manner,—did he run through the streets of Paris with a 
drawn sword, crying “ Tue, tue ! ” The veteran died of old 
age, in the sequent year, 1573; and his son, who has left 
Memoires, repudiates for his father all participation in the 
matter. The fact is probably this : that Tavannes was indig¬ 
nant at the presence of the exiled Montgomery, the mur¬ 
derer of the six capitulated barons, and who, within the year, 
was excluded from a capitulation, as will be related, and 
executed as a traitor. If Tavannes interfered passionately 
in these events, it was caused by the insolence of Mont¬ 
gomery’s presence amidst the 800 Huguenots threatening by 
their presence and behaviour the king and the capital. So 


86 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


likewise Birague—wlio after this retreated from his heavy 
duties to retire upon a cardinal’s hat, and survive a very few 
y ears —the chancellor between the honoured names of Hurault 
l’Hospital and Hurault de Cheverny—chancellor also to 
Henri IV. until his decease—ought to be a guarantee that 
they are names which will not bear dishonour. All the 
ministers chosen by the queen mother will bear the strictest 
investigation into their character. For her son Anjou, 
then (he says so) present, I doubt not that he was a bitter 
thorn in their sides, and wished a hundred leagues away. 

The Duke of Guise, with his brother D’Aumale, left Paris, 
and repudiated all participation in the massacre; which is 
quite consistent with his part of the drama, which was that of a 
blood feud and revenge on the man who had vaunted and 
almost accepted the death of his father. 

Again, did King Charles, standing on a balcony of the 
Louvre, fire on the fleeing mob with his own hand ? 

On Sunday, at seven o’clock (the fourth or fifth hour after 
the death of Coligni), the king with Anjou and his mother (so 
runs the tale), “ were keeping vigil in the chamber over the 
portico of the Louvre, and he was watching the corpses float 
down the Seine ”—thus libellists overreach themselves; for 
corpses sink, and do not float until the fifth day at earliest: 
but let that pass. But he saw the rabble shouting and stone¬ 
throwing ; looking out, it is said that he saw Montgomery, 
with two others, fleeing before the rabble; that, he made an 
exclamation, and seized an arquebuse de chasse , and shot at 
them.” 

The story is told by Brantome (Froude’s worthless Bran- 
tome), who mentions it as a mad act of absurdity to discharge 
small shot at a distance whence it must have been ineffec¬ 
tual. But to show how history has seized upon these scenic 
points, the editor of the * Henriade ’ and the editor of Sully’s 
Memoires have made the anecdote superlatively absurd by 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


87 


their comments. They adduce the proof of this Brantome 
tale from above a century after the fact. Citing Brantome, 
they add: “ What is sure ” is that plusieures personifies have 
heard the Marechal de Tesse relate that in his infancy he 
had seen a gentleman, more than a hundred years old (the 
editor of c Sully ’ reduces his age to ninety years, which is 
sad in an editor), who was very young amidst the guards of 
Charles IX., whom he questioned on the point as to whether 
the king had shot at the Huguenots. “ ‘ C’etait moi, mon¬ 
sieur,’ repondait le vieillard, * que chargeais son arquebuse.’ ” 
After this, let the author of the { Pleader’s Guide ’ hide his 
diminished head:— 

“ Witness. But doctor Tench, sir, told me- 

Counsel. Pooh! 

Don’t tell us, sir, what Tench told you.” 

Absurd and full of contradictions as is this passage of his¬ 
tory, yet, if it were true that King Charles had discharged 
a fowling-piece from the Louvre, it would not have been at a 
fleeing Huguenot; but it was at the Count of Montgomery, 
the banished man with banishment unrepealed; whose pre¬ 
sence in Paris was a scandal and a menace to the crown, 
and who was debased with unsoldierly murder—on a day of 
which this was an anniversary—of the six barons, at Pau. 

On the morning of Monday, the 25th, the populace left 
the streets. The king, queen mother, and Anjou drove 
through the city, and received acclamations of applause. 
Navarre and Conde were kept at home. 

On Tuesday, 26th, the king went to mass with Anjou. 
Then he received the Parliament of Paris, and avowed his 
share in the slaughter. 

De Thou replied to him. A medal was struck in comme¬ 
moration :—“ Charles IX. dompteur des Rebelles le 24 Aout, 
1572.” Pope Pius wept on hearing the tidings, and soon 


88 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


died; but Gregory XIV., bis successor, adopted and applauded 
the deed. Tavannes, dying and confessing bis sins, was 
reminded tbat be bad not confessed to St. Bartholomew. 
“I hold tbat to be amidst my virtues,” replied be. As Tavannes 
died a few months after the St. Bartholomew, this story is 
very improbable. 

We have now to proceed from Paris to the provinces, and 
to investigate, not invectives, but facts. A justice would 
charge a jury to cast off from their minds all impressions 
acquired from rumour: and tbat “ de non apparentibus et 
non existentibus eadem est ratio.” Never will tbat maxim 
do better work than now. We are told, tbat on the 23rd, 
Catherine retired to her sanctum to send missives to the 
provinces, commanding the slaughter. But there are no 
such missives in existence, nor does the history of events 
give any warrant to such a supposition. We find the fol¬ 
lowing letter of that day written by the king to the Governor 
of Burgundy, by whose wisdom, it is said, the popular fury 
was stayed in Burgundy and the slaughter at Dijon returned 
as One. 

“My cousin. You have heard what I wrote to you the day 
before yesterday of the wounding of my cousin the Admiral, and 
of my firm intent to chastise the perpetrators. It has since been 
shown that those of the house of Guise, who are many in this 
city, having learnt that the friends of the admiral would take 
their revenge, have last night broken through the guard, and 
have killed him, with several gentlemen; and there have 
been many besides massacred in the city—who have pro¬ 
ceeded with such fury that I was unable to interfere effec¬ 
tually, being obliged to retain my guards about the Louvre 
with my brothers; but, having given orders to put down the 
sedition, which is, thank God, now ended, having only been 
caused by the enmity of the two houses . . . And, inasmuch 
as it is much to be feared that this feud may spread, and cause 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


89 


massacres in my cities, which I should deeply mourn, pub¬ 
lish and command within your Government that all remain 
at home in quietude, and force them to observe our edict of 
pacification—advertising all captains of towns and castles, 
and let me be kept informed of all that occurs. 

“Paris, 24th August, 1572. “ Charles.” 

Again, to Bourges, he wrote in the same style on the 27th 
August, ordering rigorous chastisement upon those who broke 
the peace; and M. Capefigue adds that the queen mother 
addressed similar letters to the governors, to show that she 
partook of her son’s anger upon these Parisian events. But, 
as we have not those letters, the last must pass as only 
rumour. Another long document, dated the 30th August, to 
the Lieutenant-General of Burgundy, also exists; we also 
find Jean Philippe, a contemporary writer, who was then at 
Montpellier, writing thus :—“ Saturday, 30th August, passed 
through Montpellier, a courier of the king, bringing the 
news of the St. Bartholomew. At first we took arms, put 
a guard upon the doors of those of the religion, and they 
imprisoned the most factious, the others and the ministers 
found means to escape. On the 8th September, they pub¬ 
lished the ordinance of the king of the 28th August, which 
declared the murder of the admiral to have been by his order, 
and desiring that his Protestant subjects should live in safety, 
and forbidding preches and assemblies. In Languedoc there 
was not the slightest excess, from the good conduct of 
Joyeuse; those of Nismes and of the Cevennes refused to 
receive garrisons ; Castres obeyed. At the close of October, 
the Marechal de Domville arrived at Beaucaire. The Pro¬ 
testants seized Uzez, Sommieres, and some other small places. 
The Marechal arrived at Montpellier about Christmas.” 

D’Achille Gamon, a contemporary, writes from Annonai 
that they were in a terrible fright; that Domville arrived 
there at Christmas, 1572, as Lieutenant-General in Lan- 


90 


CATHERINE HE MEDICI. 


guedoc, bearing the assurance of liberty of conscience in 
favour of the religionists who were quiet and submissive to 
the ordinances of the king. Du Peloux declared, by word of 
mouth, to the inhabitants of Annonai that the king intended 
there should be but one religion in France, and that all 
should go to Mass. The greater part of the Protestants of 
Annonai and of the neighbouring towns and villages assisted 
at Mass, but those of D’Aubenas and De Privas took arms, 
and seized on the town of Dezaigues, the chateau de Bozas, 
and repaired the breaches in the gates of Annonai and forti¬ 
fied the chateau,” and, in fact, beat the royal authorities, 
coercing the Catholics until the peace of 3rd February, 1576. 

At home, there is a royal edict of the 28th August, com¬ 
manding aU to keep the peace, and setting forth the cause of 
the murder of the admiral, throwing all the blame upon him 
as the source of sedition and of a conspiracy against the 
Crown, commanding peace, but suppressing le preche — 
Huguenot meetings of prayer. We find the cause in the Par¬ 
liament of Paris, who renew and put in force the uhrepealed 
sentence of the 28th August, 1571, declaring that he had been 
guilty of high treason, that he was a disturber and breaker of 
the peace, enemy to repose, tranquillity, and public safety, 
chief, author, and conductor of the said conspiracy against 
the king and the state, which has damne his memory and sup¬ 
pressed his name: that his body (if it could be found) should 
be dragged on a hurdle to the Place de Greve and hung on a 
gallows before the Hotel de Ville for 24 hours, thence taken 
to Montfau 9 on and hung there: that his armorial bearings 
should be dragged in the dust, erased from his palaces, and 
his children declared ignoble and disinherited of titles 
and estates: that his Castle of Chatillon should be razed to 
the ground, and that the feast of St. Bartholomew—the 24th 
August—should be a fete for ever with public prayer and 
procession for the punishment of the said conspiracy against 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


91 


the crown and state. Pronounced and executed at Paris 
27th and 29th October, 1572. Which edict of the Parliament 
is in accordance with the recorded character of Coligni that 
the great actions of his life were against his God, his 
religion, his country, and his king; added to which, he was 
a man of undoubted capacity and irrepressible intrigue. 

Whilst that was proceeding at Paris the rumour ran to the 
provinces, to Meaux en Brie, where 200 victims fell on 
the 25th. It reached Orleans on the 26th, where 1350 fell; 
Rouen 660; at Lyons on the 30th, where, despite of the 
endeavours of the governor, who put the Huguenots into 
keeping to save them, the populace broke in and massacred. 
These numbers are all taken from unsigned pamphlets, and 
are wholly untrusty,—only, they none of them understate the 
matter. 

On the other hand, there were the governors of Dauphiny, 
Auvergne, Burgundy, and Bayonne, who are reported to 
have repudiated the presumed royal commands, of which 
they have not to show a shadow of proof, for such commands 
do not exist. The magniloquent letter of the governor of 
Orthez is a palpable forgery of later date. 

To sum up the facts : we find six gentlemen slain together 
with Coligni,—namely, Rochefoucauld ; Resnel, who was 
murdered by his own relative, Louis de Clermont, for they 
were at war for a possession ; Teligni, son - in ~ law to 
Coligni; Guerchi; Montaumar, and Rouvrai. Nine more 
are mentioned as killed at the Louvre,—Pardaillon, Bources, 
de Piles, Quellence, Berni, Beaudisney, Beaumandir; six 
more as perishing in the streets, amidst whom were Caumont 
and his son, whilst the child (Caumont) escaped, and we find 
about six escaping : we find no signs of indiscriminate 
slaughter, or of mutilation or cruelty, such as in the 
Jacquerie and Parisian revolutions, we find about eighteen 
names paraded, over and over, slain with Coligni, or at the 


92 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Louvre, or in the flight of whom Rochefoucauld and Coligni 
are the sole of note, for young Teligni only has the 
borrowed light as Coligni’s son-in-law, and with respect to 
the total slain in the provinces there is nothing to lead us 
save most vague rumour, which the historian Mathieu corrects 
in these words, “ The province of Burgundy alone escaped 
through the prudence of her governor; where Montmorenci 
ruled, the towns got off frightened but unhurt.” He adds, 
“although the execution was not so violent as has been 
published, nor the numbers equal to rumour, it is very 
certain that this day of blood and misery ought for ever to 
be effaced from our history for the wrong it bears to the 
honour of France.” 

The books of the Hotel de Ville of Paris show that the 
bodies of the slain were buried by contract—there were 
eight contractors—the sum was 20 francs the and 

1100 bodies were so buried. This is in excess of the 
number given by an honest Calvinist, Le Popiliniere, who 
estimates the number of slain in Paris roundly at 1000, 
whilst others raise it to 2000. I doubt any having been 
thrown into the Seine: the several histories do not warrant 
any such a statement. Then the estimates for all France 
run thus 

Papyrius Masson . .. .. 10,000 

De Thou . 20,000 

The Calvinists themselves .. 15,000 

We have, besides these, two authors, with whom their 
editors have taken a clever liberty, but it has passed not 
only unchallenged but accepted with glee, to pass on to a 
gdbemouche world of readers. Sully wrote the numbers, 
perhaps, more truly than any other, at 7000, and Bishop 
Perefixe wrote also 10,000; of this I entertain no doubt, but 
the greediness of the Protestant world for marvels, and to 
magnify the monster, added an 0 to each of those numbers, 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


93 


and the original sums, multiplied by ten, have not only 
escaped criticism but have been gulped with avidity, and Sully 
and Perefixe are thrust into the van with the 100,000 of the 
latter’s work uncontradicted. 

So Mr. Prescott is constrained to refute the popular state¬ 
ment that 50,000 persons were executed for their religious 
opinions in the Netherlands under the Emperor Charles V. 
He writes, “ This monstrous statement has been repeated 
by one historian after another with apparently as little dis¬ 
trust as examination;” adding in a note, “Grotius swells 
the numbers to 100,000. It is all one; beyond a certain 
point of the incredible one ceases to estimate probabilities.” 
Mr. Prescott says, that in Castile, where the auto-da-fes were 
popularly welcome, and the Jews the victims, the numbers 
were stated by the secretary oF the Inquisition as only 
10,000; whilst in the Netherlands each execution was a fresh 
outrage on the liberty of the nation; that the nine*times 
renewed edict proves how sluggish was its operation; whilst 
Gueldres and Brabant stood on their privileges and repelled 
the edict altogether.* 

But the contemporary omissions of mention of this day 
are extraordinary. Whilst the storm of 1570, and the earth¬ 
quake at Kinniston, the star appearing in the east, the chain 
of gold weighing 1000 French crowns, and the supposed * 
prognostic to Queen Catherine, all are fully descanted upon, 
no mention is made of St. Bartholomew; and, consequently, 
the fable of the reception in mourning attire, of La Motte 
Fenelon, vanishes in air: Hollingshead, with his verbatim 
speeches, does not mention the massacre. Camden awaits 
until the sequent visit by Montmorenci in 1573, to make 
simple mention of it; and Sir Bichard Baker, who mainly 
copies from Camden, awaits and claps it aU together wit! 


Philippe II. i. 308. 


94 


CATHEKINE DE MEDICI. 


the death of Charles IX. in 1574. Camden’s story is 
given at the Kenilworth interview, where Elizabeth “ se 
modeste excusavit on the grounds of diversity of religion 
and disparity of age.” Sir Richard Baker informs us that 
the slaughter extended to many thousands; which does not 
warrant tens of thousands, and would tally with Mathieu, 
that the exaggeration by fame was very great. I do not find 
that Stow, Chamberlain, or Raleigh, allude to it. Lely in 
his * Euphues ’ makes no allusion to it, although his story 
travels over the continent about that time; nor do I find any 
allusion to it in the “ English reprints ” collated by Mr. 
Edward Arber. These prove that the story of St. Bartho¬ 
lomew was of after growth, and was merged at the time in 
the other slaughters of the day—Rome and Rathlin, Pau and 
Yassi, as undeserving especial mention on this side of the 
Channel. 

We also find the Huguenots meet again—on the anni¬ 
versary, 24th August, 1573—at Montauban, as strong as 
ever, as aggressive as ever; and there, “profiting by the 
peace, they nominated deputies to take their demands to 
the king; by whom reorganized, their body nominated a 
dozen governors of provinces, authorized the seizing of 
ecclesiastical benefices, to raise voluntary contributions from 
Huguenot towns, and to levy black mail on Catholic districts 
to free them from vexation, and, so says their own his¬ 
torian, La Popliniere, they were up and at them again with 
20,000 men. 

That Sully wrote the victims at 7000, and that such 
number is slightly in advance of the true number, which 
probably touched 6000; for De Thou is a wretched authority, 
and the Calvinists doubled the sum in their 15,000, and who 
would have laughed outright had anybody told them that 
the Royalists had so murdered them; the absurdity would 
have been an excellent joke to the freebooters. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


95 


If Queen Elizabeth of England received the ambassador, 
La Motte Fenelon, in mourning attire, it was for queen 
Jeanne, and not practising her usual dissimulation. St. Bar¬ 
tholomew was a fleabite to Rathlin, Clandiboy, and St. Mary’s 
Wick ; whilst she took the gold chain of Alen^on and stood 
as godmother to Charles IX’s daughter simultaneously. 
And if Henri of Navarre chafed, which I do not believe, he 
had only to revert his eyes to Pau, and, three years prior, to 
behold an infinitely worse picture of intolerance, greed, 
and cruelty, enacted by the dominant Calvinists on the 
Catholics of Bearn. 

Sir Richard Baker, in his chronicles speaking of the 
slaughter at St. Mary Wick (Smerwick), of the surrendered 
Spaniards, writes: “ And yet more cruelty than this was at 
that time committed in the Netherlands; for Sir John 
Norris and Oliver Temple, English commanders, together 
with some companies of .Hutch, setting out early one morning, 
took Mechlin, a wealthy town of Brabant, at an assault with 
ladders, where they promiscuously murdered both citizens 
and religious persons, offering violence even upon the dead, 
and taking gravestones into England to be sold.”—P. 358. 

The stories cold-bloodedly told by Sully of the wars 
under Henri of Navarre shock one. “ They pillaged, they 
glutted.” “ I gained a purse of a thousand crowns in gold 
for my share, which an old man, pursued, gave me to save 
his life.” “ The prince contented himself with only seven or 
eight of the most mutinous to be hanged; but he was obliged 
to abandon them to the fury of the men of Montauban, who 
butchered them without mercy.” The following anecdote 
touches most by its pathos : “ A young girl threw herself 
into my arms (at Chateau Cambresis), who, holding me fast, 
conjured me to protect her from the soldiers. I endeavoured 
to calm her fears, and offered to conduct her to the next 
church; she told me she had been there, and had been 


96 


CATHERINE DE MEDICL 


expelled because they knew she had the plague. My blood 
froze in my veins at the declaration. I thrust the girl from 
me, who exposed me to death to save her, and, flying as fast 
as I was able, expected every moment to be seized by the 
plague.’’ 

And yet veracious history could discover that Henri fed 
Paris when he blockaded and took it by famine , and the 
Bearnese besought him to accept their empty purse when 
he subjected them to taxes. No paradoxes are too gross to 
prove Henri of Navarre and Elizabeth of England to be 
excellent, and none too gross to prove Catherine de Medici 
and her sister queen, Mary of Scotland, to be execrable. But 
to revert to my subject matter on hand, except the solitary 
facts of Queen Catherine sitting in council on the 22nd at 
night, and visiting the wounded Coligni with her sons and 
daughters on the 23rd, I do not find one tittle of evidence 
to lay the odium of this day upon her shoulders. As Pere- 
fixe remarks, historians and panegyrists to the number of 
hundreds had written and sung in praise of Henri the Great, 
whilst Queen Catherine had the libellous Bochelle edition of 
the * Yie Privee ’ to be alone contrasted with them. 

History cannot be truly drawn from taking microscopic 
views of prominent events, and magnifying them to porten¬ 
tous dimensions, as we, on the Protestant side of the question, 
have been guilty of doing in those matters which conflict 
with Catholicism : so likewise do the other side write wholly 
in a party spirit, and involve history in contradictions and 
paradoxes—often falsifying the events. The reader may 
believe as he chooses, if he read only to prove the foregone 
conclusions of his mind ; but if he sits as a judge of events, 
he will only proceed according to the evidence, and reject 
the tattle which too often, like scum on a deep river, floats 
uppermost: all great personages are subject to the malice 
of the “ many,” especially when thev are down-fallen in 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


97 


fortune. To draw the indictment from the anonymous malice 
of their professed foes—as to draw that of Queen Catherine 
from the ‘ Discours; ’ or that of Queen Mary of Scotland from 
Buchanan’s ‘ Detectio Mariae,’ or the letters of Drury to 
Cecil; of that of Queen Elizabeth from Dr. Allen’s pam¬ 
phlet, or the letters of Mendoza to King Philip ; or, like 
Macaulay, rake the gutters of literature for libels on the 
Marlboroughs—making mountains of molehills, and ignoring 
mountains if they rise perversely to their historic wishes,— 
although such procedure is not amenable to any temporal 
law of libel, as it is presumed that you cannot hurt the dead, 
yet it becomes a spiritual law, which will be registered in 
God’s Chancery, where the historian will be arraigned on the 
breach of the ninth commandment, and be convicted at once 
of malignity and falsehood, in assailing the fame of the 
mighty dead. 

Such was especially the case when the house of Valois 
went out in offensive fume, and the house of Bourbon suc¬ 
ceeded it with exaggerated flame; then it was necessary for 
the Perefixes, and hundred panegyrists, to sink the fame of 
their victims before the fame of then reigning powers. The 
only way to make a Henri IV. great, was by making his pre¬ 
decessor little. The house of Guise and the queen mother 
as the most capable of bearing the burden cast off from the 
shoulders of their reigning deity were decried. 

It is utterly vain to wander in the mazes of history, assuming 
one side to uphold, and rejecting a side to be decried, unless 
we can discover the motive principle by which, as says the 
satirist,—“ Wharton stands confessed.” The motive prin¬ 
ciple and ruling cause of the Huguenots was—plunder. 

The spirit of rebellion has raged in France perhaps more 
severely than in any other country of the world. The Hept¬ 
archy which we quelled under our Saxon kings, was not 
quelled in France until the period in which we write, 

H 


98 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Francis I., and Henry II. liis son, bent their energies that 
way, but with their decease, and a minor king and female 
regent, the nobles dwarfed the throne, and contended around 
it for the mastery. Henri IY. next succeeded in creating a 
national spirit and power, which he knew would fall to 
pieces with his own life, under similar circumstances, another 
minor king and female regent, but then arose the master- 
hand which slew the hydra; Richelieu supervened and quelled 
the Huguenots and the provinces. But in the year 1572, want 
and famine impelled the old companions and borderers to 
rally under the newly burst fervour of reformation to have 
another raid at the fatter purses of the burghers and the 
Church. Queen Marguerite of Navarre, who had housed 
Calvin as long as she was able, and who wrote in imi¬ 
tation of Erasmus in his golden legend, in her ‘ Heptameron,’ 
and Queen Jeanne were doubtless devout reformers; but the 
husbands and sons were naught, and the followers, like those 
of David, were worse than those of Adullam, only looking 
out for something to devour. The 24th of August seemed 
to be a rallying day with them; the harvest was ripe and 
overgathered, and they could live their holidays in clover 
and free quarters, and we find them at full work again in 
the sequent year, 1573, like giants refreshed. Such was 
the party calling itself Reformers : they were banditti— but 
territorial banditti, with the marshes of Guienne and the 
mountains of Navarre and of Cevennes, wherein to shelter, 
and who for two hundred years bore the appellation of 
Huguenots; before that they were Free Companions; and 
subsequently they were Vendeens and Refractaires, and ever 
hostile to the powers reigning at Paris. 

Another ruling motive power of this time, was the unbri¬ 
dled youth of the male actors; they militated long before 
they attained years of discretion; they appeared to set no 
value on their lives, and duels, riots, and wars were their 


CATHEKINE DE MEDICI. 


99 


pastime; few outlived half the days allotted to man—war, 
assassination or excess—they divided their aspirations be¬ 
tween successful love and chivalry, and scorned the alternative 
of death. The youth and recklessness of the male nobility 
may be a cause that the women of that age so surpassed 
them in intellect, learning and policy. They lived free and 
excluded from such excesses by the laws of nature and those 
of society, added to the mind: whether or not the French 
women were superior positively, or only comparatively, to 
those of other times, or whether they only shine by the 
side of their rollicking husbands and brothers is matter of 
opinion. 

The civil law at that time ruling the conduct of the sex 
was bloody. Infidelity was punished by death, and we find 
it rigorously put into execution. But with regard to princes, 
those for whom state marriages were contracted, they appear, 
with few exceptions, to have a morgenic wife of their own 
choice. Such were Agnes de Sorel and Diana of Poitiers, 
whose issue bore the paternal name, with the title of batarcl 
appended ; and, save that they did not succeed to the paternal 
lands (for the burghers and the lawyers steadily forbad it), 
they lived in the paternal home and consorted with the legi¬ 
timate children. So we find the Angoulemes domiciled with 
the Valois—the sons of both Francis I. and Henry II. 
bearing that title;* but, in the persons of Francis I. and 
afterwards in the house of Bourbon (including King Antoine, 
the prince of Conde—slain at Jarnac, and Henri IV.) the 
immorality surpassed all bounds of decency or humanity— 
it grew brutal and horrible; Queen Jeanne used to prophesy 
the vices of the Bourbons would prove their ruin—and they 

* The regal title of Angouleme, appertaining to the house of Valois, 
was resigned to their illegitimate offspring for three generations— 
Francis I., Henri II., and Henri III. bestowing it on their bastards 
~grand priors and chevaliers and duchesses. 

H 2 


l.ofC, 


100 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


did so. But it is to blunder deeply to imagine that this 
immorality spread to tbe nation or to tbe female part of the 
Court, to whom the custom was as hateful as it was inju¬ 
rious. Those who seek to cast on the Court of Queen 
Catherine the stigma of immorality only do so to shelter, 
beneath a false plea, the brutality of Henry IV. and his party 
and subsequent immorality of the Louis XIII., XIV., and 
XV. The House of Guise also was free from this debasing 
state of morals : they were the exact reverse of the Bourbons 
in religion, morals, and riches, which ought to have ensured 
to them a happier fate than fell to their lot. 

The Court of Francis I. was reflected in that of James V. 
of Scotland; that of Louis XIII. in that of our Charles II., 
who both, unhappily were “ nurtured on the banks of Seine,” 
but whose nurture found no realm to welcome it, either in 
Scotland or England : it dwindled back to the old morgenic 
proportions, and finally died away in the rugged soil to the 
genius of which it was unadapted—they passed as baneful 
meteors, and have left an exaggerated and fabulous fame 
behind. 

These remarks are made here, as intended to be apropos to 
the then position of the queen mother and her unequalled 
Court of majestic dames and fair damsels: she herself had 
assumed a majestic aspect, but with a ringing laugh when 
tickled. It was, as before said, an unequalled Court, and 
contrasted so strongly the unbridled males of that age, that 
cynics, such as Sully, believed that she enchanted men by 
means of them; and truly so she did, but it was by the legi¬ 
timate means of superior worth, and the heiresses who might 
be there won and convey principalities to their lords. It is 
strange to remark that, in a land where the Salique law 
excluded females from the throne and perplexed the succes¬ 
sion, that the principalities appeared to be constantly falling 
to the maidens; and heiresses were as numerous as blossoms 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


101 


in spring. They were often crossed in love, as were Mar¬ 
garet of Valois and Catherine of Bourbon, respectively for¬ 
bidden Henri of Guise and the Count of Soissons—and a 
great part of the history of these times aggregates round the 
heiresses. Queen Catherine guarded her Court well, under 
her Calvinistic dames D’Uzes and Montmorenci; and, save 
the raids made upon it by Antoine, Henri his son, and Conde 
the uncle, we hear of no scandal. Young D’Elbceuf was 
expelled the Court at Plessis-la-Tours, with a damsel whose 
proceedings were too light; and the Duke of Nemours was 
prosecuted by the queen to fulfil a marriage engagement with 
Mdlle. de Bohan which he broke to wed his first love Aune 
d’Este, dowager duchess of the murdered Guise, for which 
suit he was upheld by the law courts—perhaps because 
the lady deserted was of the “ religion; ” but the queen 
mother ennobled the wronged girl as Duchess of Loudonois, 
who ever after lived in privacy. Against vague malice and 
scandal, you will find hard facts and gracious deeds. Of the 
cynic Sully and bavard D’Etoile I mean to say somewhat 
hereafter. It is time to end this digression inserted here 
because, from this point, I do not believe the queen mother 
possessed any power save to cast oil on troubled waters to 
follow in the wake of her stormy sons, and remedy, so far as 
possible, the follies committed by them. 

— 

CHAPTER III. 

HENRI III. 

“ The crown of Poland, venal thrice an age,” was upon the 
market; Sigismund II. having died 7th July, 1572, and 
Anjou was elected over his competitors in May, 1573. He 


102 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


was besieging the offensive town of La Rochelle when the 
news reached him; Charles IX. deeply hating and envying 
him his military fame. That siege was brought to a termi¬ 
nation by an edict of pacification, by which the Rochellers 
with the towns of Nismes and Montauban re-attained the 
right of the public exercise of the reformed ritual. Nor need 
it surprise us that they should cast on one side their brother 
towns; for the instinct of the Rochellers was to rebel and 
to besiege, and not to be besieged, which was another thing 
to them. The queen mother informed Anjou of his eleva¬ 
tion, and explained to him that his brother’s exertions had 
acquired him a crown. But Henri had no will to go; he 
loved his home position; he wished to win and marry the 
Princess of Conde (Marie of Cleves), uncared for by her 
husband, and the requisite divorce being the spice of sin 
which flavoured the chalice of love to Henri’s lips. But 
he had already a mistress, Mile, de Chateauneuf, who was 
a wonderful damsel, such as it is fair to see in such scenes. 
She was to be made over in honourable matrimony to a Sieur 
de Nantouillet; who being recalcitrant, his house was broken 
into by the emissaries of the king, and sacked and plundered; 
and the damsel on horseback meeting on foot the man who 
had despised and rejected her, rode at him, horsewhipped, 
and then over him, mauling him badly enough. She 
afterwards wedded the Seigneur de Castellaine, and slew him 
for an infidelity to her—real or supposititious. The queen 
mother was obliged to come to the front to induce Henri to 
depart and accept his crown; Charles fell ill with excite¬ 
ment and fever, escorting his brother out of his realms : 
these scenes and events were far beyond the porte of his weak 
and excitable brain. The brothers parted at Nancy—Charles 
in bed, where Henri went to resign his baton of Lieutenant- 
General. At Nancy the Duke of Lorraine met them; the 
Princess Claude was absent, she had given another daughter 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


103 


to the house of Valois-Lorraine. Henri first saw there the 
lady he eventually married, Louise de Vaudemont, a sort 
of Cinderella of the house of Lorraine. He was attracted by 
her resemblance to the Princess of Conde, and danced with 
her : she was twenty-one years old, poor soul; she had lost 
her mother, and a step-mother, and again was thrall to a third 
injusta noverca , who, with four rival offspring treated Louise 
harshly. Fortune made her a queen. 

We find our Queen Catherine here as godmother to her 
granddaughter Christine, who afterwards married into the 
house of Medici, and in November she bade adieu to her 
favourite son with many maternal tears and fears; Margue¬ 
rite also parted from him with equanimity. With the Polish 
reign we have nothing to do, and we return with the queen 
mother to other works and woes. 

Here the jealousies which had centered on Anjou de¬ 
volved by gravitation on his brother Ale^on ; his favourite, 
la Mole, was the object of hatred of the hating king. This 
man was a chief instrument in luring Alenin over to the 
Huguenot side; the promise of the Netherlands, of a mar¬ 
riage with Elizabeth, and being chief of the party, cast him 
into the arms of Montmorenci, who undertook to demand 
from Charles the baton resigned by the king of Poland. This 
was very adverse to the queen mother’s views, who had 
accepted the trusty Guises in exchange for the untrusty 
Bourbons; there was no political consistency in reverting 
to them after having broken with them so thoroughly; the 
Lorraines were friends, the Bourbons were foes ; but Charles 
was set against his mother, and he chose to give the baton 
to Alenin, “ and not make one foe more.” Catherine would 
have bestowed it on her son-in-law, the Duke of Lorraine. 
The royal abode was no bed of roses to any, but least of all 
so to the queen mother, who had to steer the ship which 
obeyed not the rudder or the sail. Now, too, the accursed 


104 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


blood of the Valois and Bourbons defiled her court, and 
overwhelmed her with additional care. Conde was the victim 
of the King of Poland’s love for his wife; and young Navarre 
and Alengon contended for Madame de Sauve, the famous 
Nourmetier—the siren or sibylle of the court. The demon 
of their houses, which as Queen Jeanne had remarked, was 
running its course, from which not even was the court free; 
and the Huguenots, utterly devoid of honour or of truth, were 
gathering themselves up for more plunder and another raid. 

1574.—La Noue and Montgomery led the rebels, and on 
February 22nd captured Lusignan and Fontenay. Down fell 
the towns: but they had calculated on the aid of Alenin 
to head them; he, on the contrary, was overwhelmed with 
fear, and wept, bellowed, and refused, repulsing both Navarre 
and Turenne, entreating him. 

The news fell like a bomb on the court, not dreaming of 
such treachery. The queen mother rushed to the front—the 
only one possessing energy in the hour of need, and she 
commanded a return to Paris. Alenin divulged the con¬ 
spiracy, and Navarre was ordered into the presence; they 
were reprimanded and pardoned, but carried off by the queen 
mother to Paris. King Charles appears to have been utterly 
powerless, he followed with the queen his energetic mother 
on the next day: the conspiracy went on under the leader¬ 
ship of La Noue, and the offensive Montgomery, upon whom 
Charles shot, if he shot at all, on the 24th of August. The 
king aroused himself anew at the news of Montgomery’s suc¬ 
cess. Three divisions of the royal army were despatched to 
oppose him in Normandy, led by the ever loyal Marechal De 
Matignon. The Duke of Montpensier led that destined 
against Guienne, and D’Auverge his son and heir advanced to 
Languedoc and Dauphiny. In the meantime Navarre and 
Alengon made professsions of loyalty they did not feel, and 
awaited the opportunity to rebel/ The next step which the 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


105 


queen mother took was to arrest Montmorenci and Cosse. 
Navarre and Alen£on were likewise arrested; but Turenne, 
Thore, Beauvois, and Grandchamp fled and escaped to the 
borders ; while La Mole and Coconnas were executed. Here 
again we are involved in a lack of evidence, and the story 
of 1574 is told as each pleases to suit his cause, magic being 
the presumed main-spring of action. 

And now 29th and 30th of May, in the castle of Vincennes 
Charles IX. was fast dying. There is indisputable force in 
the words and deeds of dying men. Those of Charles were 
three—confidence in his queen mother, to whom he left the 
reins; diffidence towards Alenin, to whom he addressed 
words of peace, not to oppose his brother’s accession ; and, 
lastly, that he had no joy in the capture of Montgomery, 
for that he himself was likewise dying. He expired Whit¬ 
sunday, 1574. 

The subject of these pages, the queen mother, then saw 
expire the third of her sons, following her husband to his 
untimely tomb; her remaining sons, Henry and Anjou, 
hating like the Theban brothers, and the Salique law barring 
her daughters and grandsons in the heritage, whilst the 
Bourbons were hostile to her in every point of view. This 
Niobe of queens, is entitled to our best commiseration, she 
wrote to La Motte Fenelon in a sweet and plaintive strain, 
worthy of herself or any bereaved mother. She then had 
Henri III. proclaimed, and keeping a strict guard on Navarre 
and Alenin, whose promises she well knew were as piecrusts, 
she prepared to guard the realm until his coming. 

This year, too, died the Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, the 
brother of Francis of Guise and uncle of Mary Stuart. 
“ Uno avulso non deficit alter,” Henri of Guise and another 
Cardinal de Lorraine arise, to die by like assassination at 
Blois in 1588. The repetition of the same titles is the most 
perplexing point in history, and the numbering of these 


106 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


hereditary potentates in France is almost as desirable as the 
numbering of the kings. 

The escape and adventures of Henri III. from Poland until 
he rejoined the queen mother at Lyons, September 6th, do 
not belong to this story. Our Catherine had her son 
and her son-in-law Navarre in hand, she delivered them to 
Henri, calling them her prisoners. Alenin accused the 
dead king ; “ Be it so my brothers,” said Henri; “ the past is 
forgotten, now give me love and fealty.” The Queen of 
Navarre and the old flame, Chateauneuf, greeted him there, 
and so Henri re-entered France; Marie de Cleves, his great 
passion, died in giving birth to Catherine of Conde. Dire 
was the conflict of love and propriety in the adoption of a 
queen, whom Henri chose in Louise de Yaudemont of 
Lorraine, sister of the Count of Mercceur, who plays hence¬ 
forth his prominent part upon the stage. 

In the interim Henri headed his army and was imme¬ 
diately subjected to a conspiracy of his brothers. The 
bird’s-eye view of the court is one which will show the diffi¬ 
culties of our Queen Catherine. Alengon revolting, Navarre 
a prisoner; Henry insisting that the amazon Chateauneuf 
should be received by Queen Louise. Here the queen 
mother intervened, and insisted on the expulsion from Court 
of the offensive dame. This incident is only adduced to 
show the difficulties with which Catherine had to contend. 
Another difficulty she grappled with in attempting a mar¬ 
riage between Alengon with our Queen Elizabeth, who nick¬ 
named him “ her frog ; ” and which is one of those pages of 
history one would be glad to obliterate. 

Elizabeth, the widowed Queen of France, returned to 
Vienna, but she left behind her infant daughter to her grand¬ 
mother Catherine; and I cannot resist reminding that the 
Regent Moray did the like to Mary Queen of Scots; so do 
events spring up at every step to prove the worth of these 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


107 


calumniated ladies against protestant clamour. The princess 
died in her sixth year. 

The adventures of two such thorough young scamps as the 
King of Navarre and the Duke of AlenQon may he considered 
as of sufficient interest to appear in history, or as only fitted 
to he excluded, according to the sentiments of the reader. We 
have here a pair of thoroughly immoral boys, rebelling 
against the king and against all constraint; the year 1576 
gives many points of scandal, but hardly one deserving 
record. We find Alen^on rebelling, and Catherine striving 
with maternal solicitude to calm and reconcile their enmities • 
and it is pleasing to see that Henri III. was convinced of her 
probity, and sends her “ his respect, obedience, and perfect 
love.” She knocked herself up and fell sick at Chatelherault, 
and whilst she laboured like a man, Henri fell into those 
weaknesses for which for ever after he is renowned; pet 
dogs and penitential processions, and presiding over the 
Court of dames, who probably never were equalled before or 
since: are not their praises recorded by Brantome; the 
worthless Brantome as Froude in his cynical phrase terms 
him; but who at Courts is the best of guides. And we are 
equally free to believe it a paradise of wit and beauty or 
a Circsean sty of swine. The houses of Valois and Bourbon 
would have made it the latter, had it been in their power, 
but it was not in their power, and if the Catherines and 
Marguerites of that court were not the very nymphs of Pro¬ 
serpine gathering blossoms upon Mount Enna, they ap¬ 
proached as nearly as the different positions would allow. 
Here we find Queen Catherine again obliged to forego her 
own feelings. Francois de Montmorenci, a Bourbon, had 
wedded Diane de France, the daughter of her own husband 
Henri II. He was released from the Bastille to mediate 
between the royal brothers; but it must have been bitter 
grief to her. The Duchess of Valentinois, the mother, had 


108 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


never been expelled the Court, but remained there a favorite 
of Charles IX. and Henri III. The means of temporary- 
peace with Huguenots were ever the same, money, money, 
money; their motto, beg, borrow, and steal. 

In the month of February, 1576, Henri of Navarre escaped 
whilst hunting, which led to the arrest, and was the begin¬ 
ning of the captivity of his wife, Marguerite the queen, whose 
faults were wit, beauty, and good intellect. She was now 
seized as the hostage for her husband and imprisoned by her 
brother. Her husband never again sought her society, having 
run wild in his own career, but he ever treated her with most 
thorough respect, more so than any other wife or mistress. 
Wherever she was in captivity or in freedom, she was sought 
and beloved. 

The peace was signed 14th May, 1576, and was called 
“ Monsieur’s peace,” the terms of which were a general 
amnesty, free exercise of worship, and money paid where 
money was claimed to be owing; for the sort of peace for 
which Queen Catherine made such concessions, we have 
already shown by extracts from Sully; how he gained a 
purse of 1000 crowns for his share, how they pillaged and 
glutted, how they murdered the capitulated soldiers and 
inhabitants, and how he thrust away the young girl with the 
imagined plague with blood frozen in his veins, expecting 
every moment to be seized with the plague. Well might a 
feminine hand aid to stay such horrors as were the wars of 
extermination of that time. 

1576. By the peace of Monsieur, the rebels were purchased 
off on such terms as were sure to create reaction on the 
Parisian party. Queen Catherine may well be exonerated 
upon all points —peace between her sons was one great point, 
and peace to the community another. We err extremely in 
attributing such acts as this to petty motives; they are the 
effects of the broadest national desire to do good, and never 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


109 


those of narrowest personal passion. Catherine met her 
rebel son. The Queen of Navarre was with her and frater¬ 
nised with the rebel son Alenin against her eldest brother, 
who hated and traduced her. The Huguenots were bought 
off at a great price. The huge concessions destroyed them¬ 
selves ; the brigands overshot the mark: they created the 
League, not in its Parisian dimensions of 1584, but still here 
the League first saw the light in the town of Peronne as an 
adversary to rebellion, and we have henceforth Henri the 
Calvinist and Henri the Romanist until the next gyration of 
the wheel. The year 1576 went out in renewed war, which 
the queen mother converted into another peace in 1577, 
whilst the history of France resolves itself into the follies 
of Henri III. and the rebellion of Henry IY. and Alenyon. 
Two towns revolted to the Crown; and the causes are so 
remarkable and graphic of the times that they deserve a place 
in this treatise. Henri the Bourbon and Huguenot held his 
Court at Agen, and there he gave a ball, at which the candles 
were blown out, and the insolences so scandalized the inha¬ 
bitants that they handed the city over to Biron, the Governor 
of Guienne. 

La Reole was held by a Captain Ussac, old and ugly, but 
very devoted to beauty. Henri and his courtiers so chaffed 
the man that he revolted to the King of France; which two 
circumstances Bishop Perefixe adduces as pointing deep 
morals to his pupil Louis XIY. We have seen the like 
grossness of manners in the marriage of the godly Prince 
James, Earl of Moray, on his wedding in Edinburgh ; and the 
Calvinist Sully records, with glee, how he made the ladies of 
honour tipsy when they visited him as guests. He had some 
perfectly clear wine, and when they asked for water, he 
served them with that wine, and considered he had done a 
courtly deed. These are righteous Huguenots who never 
cease railing at the Romans and vaunting their own superior 


110 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


righteousness. The history of 1578 and 1579 is a scan-' 
dalous story as Perefixe sums it up — “ the two Henris 
plunged into a vortex of pleasures ; the sole difference being 
that notre Henri (Bourbon) did not close his eyes to affairs, 
whilst Henri (Valois) sunk himself wholly in them.” 

And whilst the foolish kings indulged in vices, the women 
worked. Catherine de Medici, and Marguerite her daughter, 
and the Duchess of Montpensier, Catherine of Lorraine, took 
tfce part of the men, and steered their three crafts as well as 
they might with feeble and inefficient hands, unequal to their 
intelligence; the fault being on those who suffered the reins 
of government to devolve to their hands. The Queen of 
Navarre in her juvenile delinquency, neglected by her hus¬ 
band, and having never had reason to love him, aided her 
brother Alenin, henceforward Anjou, to escape by means of 
a rope, 14th Feb., 1578; who inaugurated his escape by 
writing his brother a letter of rodomontade, or of juvenile 
discontent. He was a tool in abler hands; but he himself 
was a mere abortion of the great or good,—Queen Elizabeth’s 
frog. Queen Catherine immediately followed him to Anjers, 
and went alone into its castle and sought her rebel son, who 
then promised her to return to Paris and not to prosecute his 
future pretensions in Flanders; whither he fled again clan¬ 
destinely, from Anjers to Mons, 7th July, 1578; whilst 
Henri III. repudiated that step of his brothers at Madrid, 
London, and Vienna. 

Meantime the energetic queen mother sought the King of 
Navarre at Nerac, his capital. She was accompanied by 
Marguerite, his queen. The amount of business she trans¬ 
acted passes belief. She adjusted disputes, re-established 
tranquillity, and the Roman ritual in the places whence it 
had been banished. She invited Conde to her Court, but 
he replied his poverty prevented him. Henri of Navarre 
now proposed that his wife, the queen, should submit to a 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Ill 


new marriage ceremonial in the reformed ritual, a proposi¬ 
tion so insulting as to prove its unreality of purpose. Her 
husband was overpowered by his mistresses, and wished for 
no wife. His history is one shameful and shameless tissue 
of infidelity. Quitting Nerac the queen mother proceeded 
on her mission of conciliation, in which she evinced talents 
and forbearance equal to any on record. The storm lulled 
at her approach and vanished at her just decisions. Had 
she been Queen of France, or had France not been subject to 
the Salique law, France had not then fallen to the depths to 
which she fell. She returned to Paris by Savoy, and returned 
hom6 to receive the due ovation of her diplomatic success. 

I cannot here refrain from citing the hostile page, in this 
instance, of Petitot, extracted from vol. xx. p. 189, upon 
husband and wife—Henri and Marguerite. After premising 
that he had won Madame de Sauve from his royal rivals to 
himself alone, and successively made suit to La Dayelle, De 
Rebours, and De Fossense, maidens attached to the courts 
of his sister or of his wife, he writes, that piqued by this 
indifference, she, Marguerite, neglected no means to wean 
him from these liaisons , but found overpowering difficulties, 
the more so as she had never known (suti) to merit his 
estime. Nevertheless she lavished ( [prodigue ) attention on 
him in his illness, and obtained a show of his attention 
Regards). It was in this lull that the queen-mother con¬ 
cluded the convention of Nerac, in which the Protestants 
recovered all their lost ground. The princess (Marguerite), 
though a zealous Catholic, entered into the cause of the 
prince; and having noticed that Pibrac, attached to Henri III. 
whilst he was in Poland, had the folie , though advanced in 
age, to be the successor of Bussy (i. e. bear her colours); 
she flattered the absurd passion of the old man, and profiting 
by his weakness, caused him to consent to all that the Pro¬ 
testants required.” This is a specimen of the rigmaroles 


112 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


to cast the odium from guilty to innocent shoulders (of 
which more hereafter), which possesses no grain of sense, 
coherency, or evidence of anything whatever against the 
neglected wife. 

Meantime the Duke of Guise returned to Paris and 
relighted the Catholic flame; and Anjou in Flanders and 
in England seeking the hand of Queen Bess, fifty years 
old, committed follies at which angels might weep, and 
drew many tears from the queen-mother opposing his fitful 
movements. Where he could scatter money he was wel¬ 
comed, elsewhere he was kicked out. Eighteen months 
had the queen mother, at upwards of sixty years of age, 
been absent on her mission of peace and conciliation. 
Only four days did she repose at Paris, where she had to 
seek again her rebel son Anjou at Alengon. She found 
him in a seventh heaven of delights. Queen Bess had 
given him a kiss, and he had played the tomfool to the 
upsetting of his small wits. Stubbs’ “ Gaping Gulph ” 
touched not him, his self esteem was in exact proportion to 
his real deficiency of worth, and more than balanced the 
difference of that deficiency. 

There occur at this time proofs that the turpitude of 
behaviour and morals did not attach to the feminine body 
of the Court, and upon this point we may feel thoroughly 
assured that the infamy was attributable to the men and not 
to the women. A maid of honour had been dismissed at 
Plessis le Tours, Madle. de la Motte Mesme, and the Marquis 
of Elboeuf, perhaps the same who scandalised Edinburgh 
some ten years before; but now there is a Lady-league, the 
Duchess Montpensier, and De Betz, and Mme. de St. Luc to 
reform King Henri’s Court. Of some supernatural means to 
reform him we need not care, they are probably untrue, and it 
is equally untrue to aver that the unparalleled Court of 
four successive queens of France, including Queen Catherine, 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


113 


Mary Stewart, Elizabeth of Austria, and Louise of Vaude- 
mont, all holding the chief place in early and irreproach¬ 
able youth, was abandoned and unchaste. The town of 
Rochelle and its Calvinists have to answer for that vile 
calumny. The feminine Court of Queen Catherine was as 
perfect as Courts and human nature admit. At the same 
time Queen Marguerite, insulted equally by her brother and 
husband, equal beasts, rallied her ladies around her; the 
ladies sent the knights to Coventry , and the righteous indig¬ 
nation of the dames inaugurated the war entitled “ la guerre 
des Amoureux.” Whatever name be assigned to it, or what¬ 
ever cause, hate and plunder I believe to have been the 
moving principles, and Henri and his Huguenots commenced 
it by the capture of Cahors; as Sully relates, “ The city 
was given up to plunder: my good fortune threw a small 
iron chest in my way in which I found 4000 crowns.” Such 
was the war “ des Amoureux.” When we read of places 
taken, we may more truly read towns and hamlets pillaged 
and burnt. Navarre did not on the whole succeed in this 
new war, and a peace was concocted at Fleix in November; 
when Anjou set out for the Low Countries to push his 
fortunes there in the spring of 1581, having spent the interim 
in his sister’s Court at Nerac, who also in the ensuing year 
returned to the Court at Paris. 

The Bishop, Perefixe, jumps over the four years from 1580 
to 1584; and truly the interim is so filled with incidents 
which derive more from scandal than aught else, that they are 
fitter subjects for romances than for history, since they effect 
no object and are solely passe-temps. We never hear of the 
queen mother, save that it is to make peace; of Marguerite, 
save of her courtly proficiency; of Henri, the king, save to 
see him play the penitent and sinner alternately. Henri 
of Navarre is like the god Faunus hunting the fair, even to 
maidens of fourteen years of age—La Fosseuse was no older ; 

i 


114 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


whilst the Lorraines walked amidst them dignified and decent 
in their demeanour. This “ piping time of peace ” is closed 
by the death of the Prince of Anjou, which occurred in May, 
1584. 

Queen Catherine was at the death-bed of her son. He 
wept, and besought her to pardon the troubles he had caused 
her. She reconciled him to his brother, ere he died; and 
then the over-wrought lady gave way herself, and was ill of 
fever. There is an episode so marking the time that it needs 
must be inserted: in the lieu of card-playing at night, mid¬ 
night masquerades and rioting masked in the streets were 
in vogue. Sir Walter Scott has shown it, in Scotland, in 
the Fair Maid of Perth —where the heir-apparent heads the 
masquers; so Harry VIII. entered Wolsey’s ball-room masked 
—Romeo, the hall of the Capulets; Guise, returned to Paris, 
had his orgie; Elboeuf and his companions scandalised. 
Edinburgh in 1565. And now the dying prince rouses to 
ride in company with the king and riot in the streets of Paris; 
which exertion sent him to a bed from whence he never rose 
again. It may be questioned whether cards and dice and 
the faro table are not improved vices to those of masquing 
and rioting in the streets. 

The death of Anjou deranged all combinations—his 
English, Flemish, and Portuguese aspirations all died with 
him, but it left the throne of France also open to another 
dynasty. Voltaire in his Henriade avers that Henri of 
Bourbon succeeded 

Et par droit de conquete et par droit de naissance. 

And yet he likewise avers in Chant VI. “ that it is an 
antient and sacred usage in the kingdom of France, when 
death closes a dynasty, such as this Valois, that the people 
re-enter on their primitive rights, and can choose a king, 
and can change the laws, or limit the monarchical power.” 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


115 


One of these exordiums must be wrong. If the people 
bad tbe inherent right to choose, Henri IY. did not 
succeed by right of birth. Elizabeth of Valois, Queen of 
Spain, left two daughters, and Claude of Valois, Duchess 
of Lorraine, left two sons and two daughters, all grand¬ 
children of Henri II. and Catherine de Medici. The argu¬ 
ment on the Salique law, in Shakespeare’s ‘ Henry the 
Fifth,’ holds that the grandson of the female line succeeds, 
though the mother might not. So Francis de Lorraine, 
grandson to Henri II., had pretensions by right of birth, 
which did not “ tomber en quenouille.” Henry V. had so 
succeeded. No one thought anything of Henri of Bourbon 
as a successor; he was beyond the seventh degree of 
parentage, he was Huguenot, he was dissipated, he was 
poor; he was incapacitated by his secession from the 
church; he was then despised; the fifty histories and five 
hundred praises of the Grand Henri were not then written ; 
and his virtues were, like the uncut gem, exceedingly 
ugly and surpassingly vicious. A sequent age reversed the 
vices into dazzling virtues. 

But somehow the chief of their own house pleased not the 
Guises; they and the League chose the old Cardinal de 
Bourbon, whom they invested as Charles X.—an investment 
ignored by the Bourbons, who went out in another Charles X., 
248 years later. This Cardinal was uncle to Henri IV., 
and the question was whether he was not nearer than 
Henri IV., who would have succeeded him; whilst Conde 
stood next after Henri in the Bourbon line. 

Henri III. endeavoured to induce Henri of Navarre to 
abjure Calvinism as the sole obstacle between him and the 
throne. Navarre refused; that hour had not then come ; it 
was to come thereafter. This was essayed without any 
knowledge of Queen Catherine. The king was acting wholly 
and utterly on his own head. Catherine was at Chinon ill, 

i 2 


116 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


and Queen Louise was afar in retirement. The royal acts 
did not extend beyond framing rules of etiquette for his 
Court, at which he worked vigorously, and adopted the rules 
of the English Court, calling to his aid the Lady Stafford, 
the ambassador’s wife. But whilst he played the faineant , 
the League revived in the Parisian pale, and averred that 
“ one faith only should be tolerated in France.” And the 
Lorraine princes, together with the old Cardinal of Bourbon, 
confederating with Spain, signed the League. 

Meantime the King Henri III. was confederating with 
Holland and England against Spain. The Prince of Orange 
was assassinated then ; and the queen mother may be believed 
to have been in favour of the Guise party, since she had two 
grandsons, Francis and Henri, of the line of Lorraine. It 
is a jumbled and doubtful page, of which we can only gather 
the facts that the Duke of Guise raised his standard in the 
Catholic cause. The king was utterly powerless between 
the two rebel Henris. In May, 1585, he was victorious in 
the field; he took Chalons-sur-Marne, whilst an attempt of 
Henri of Navarre failed. And Henri III. cast himself on 
the queen-mother, who, obtaining powers, went to Chalons- 
sur-Marne ; but she was unable to mitigate the wrath of the 
Leaguers, who obtained hard measures against, and many 
towns from, the Huguenots; and the treaty of Nemours to 
that effect was ratified 7th July, 1585, inaugurating the war 
of the three Henris. 

This ill-success added to the queen mother’s declining 
health. The ills of age had full hold upon her, and her 
efforts to pacify had come to an end. At this time she 
really possessed no power, and she retired to Chanonceau for 
repose. The king resigned himself to his favourites, Epernon 
and Joyeuse. We here find what has rarely been (if ever) 
the case before, that the parliament of Paris issued edicts for 
the confiscation of the lands and lordships of Conde and 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


117 


Navarre; and under that decree Henri seized the revenues 
of the Duchy of Yendome. The old law had been like to 
our law of gavelkind. “Sire to the bough, son to the 
ploughthe lands were not forfeited by treason. These 
edicts obtained the nickname of Edits Guizards. 

1586. Seven armies took the field, and Navarre and Conde 
had but one to oppose them; but they were veterans. There 
was no operation in the field. Queen Catherine was again 
called from her retreat to negotiate another peace. She 
came forth unwillingly, and attended solely by an aunt of 
Henri of Navarre, Catherine of Bourbon, Abbess of Soissons, 
with whom she sought her graceless son-in-law. 

The interviews were stormy and futile. Catherine re¬ 
proached her son-in-law for his apostacy in religion, and his 
scandalous licentious life, his conjugal infidelity. He is 
recorded by Perefixe to have insolently replied, “ that she 
had nothing with her to tempt him,” alluding to her want 
of her sometime female train; but on her insistance that 
he should renounce heresy, he was as firm in his resistance 
that he would not do so; and Queen Catherine quitted 
the presence of the irreverent boy to hear soon after of the 
decapitation of Mary Queen of Scots. Like Queen Hecuba, 
might not Queen Catherine ejaculate, 

“ Am I of iron, that I still survive ? ” 

But she had more to endure ere she found repose. The 
princes of Lorraine felt the deadly wrong inflicted, and 
it roused them triply to hatred of heresy, whilst Spain 
prepared the Armada and her invading army under 
Parma. 

This year, 1587, is noted by the grand victory of Coutras, 
where Henry of Navarre beat Joyeuse and the royal army, 
20th October. Joyeuse, of whom all speak most highly, fell 
in the battle; and at the same time, on the other side, the 


118 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


German reinforcement was cut off by the Duke of Guise. 
And further to balance : the Duke of Conde died in his bed, 
of sickness, and the King of Navarre rushed with his laurels 
to Corisande, the Countess of Grammont, and lost in dalliance 
the opportunity of victory. 

We now enter the annus mirabilis, foretold by soothsayers 
as mirabilissimus , as climacterical—1588. It is also our last. 

Guise and the Lorraines—especially the ladies, the Duchess- 
mother Nemours, the Duchess-sister Montpensier, and the 
Duchess, his wife—were beloved by the League. Henri III., 
whose conduct was puerile to a degree almost incredible, 
was despised. He had 2000 pet dogs, and carried pups on 
a tray slung before him; he constantly flagellated himself 
and walked barefooted in penitential processions; he danced 
at balls with death’s heads and images pendant from his 
girdle; he had no self-control, and his actions were more 
swayed by opposition to others than by any policy or will 
of his own. Although he was sane enough to reign, he was 
insane; and he was crazy. He now, seized with hatred and 
jealousy, forbad Guise to approach Paris. On the 9th of 
May Guise entered from St. Denis. He sought Queen 
Catherine and kissed her hand. The Parisians heard and 
arose in ovation. The king was overwhelmed with fear and 
anger, and then and there resolved on the death of Guise; 
but he awaited the time to do it surely, and refused the 
offers of his courtiers, which were not wanting. “ Go,” he 
said to the Count de Guiche, “ bid the queen, my mother, to 
condescend to conduct M. de Guise to the chamber of the 
queen, my wife.” And he then intended to assassinate him 
there, at the feet of the queen Louise. 

Queen Catherine, with her grand-daughter Christine, and 
the Duchess d’Uzez, in open sedans, with Guise walking 
bareheaded beside them, 11th March, sought the Louvre. 
He was worshipped as he went, and girls strewed flowers in 


CATHEKINE DE MEDICI. 


119 


his path and called him their saviour. The queen mother 
was probably in agony; and Guise rebuked them, and bade 
them to cry —Vive le Hoi. However, in the Louvre he was 
caught, and was only saved by the interposition of Catherine, 
who prevented the word being passed by the king; and 
Guise regained the street through the guards, who suffered 
him, lacking the word, to pass. 

Guise sought the Louvre on the morrow, 12th March, but 
with 400 followers. He visited the queens. A conference 
was appointed for the afternoon. He attended the third 
time, and made his demands of the king: 

1. The recognition of the Council of Trent. 

2. Abolition of the Concordat of Francis I. 

3. Exile of Epernon and favourites. 

4. Reformation of the Orthodox faith. 

And, finally, he pronounced an eulogium on the queen- 
mother. 

It matters little what Henri replied; it was mainly that 
he hated equally Huguenots and Leaguers. But he prepared 
to arrest Guise in his own hotel, and was again too long 
about it, and would not give the word. Crillon, his captain, 
was in waiting. He brought more and more troops into 
Paris, which brought about the day of the Barricades. On 
the 12th March Guise, summoned to the Louvre, declined 
to obey. Then Crillon was ordered to act, but too late. 
Barricades met him at every point. Paris was in rebellion. 
The President, Tambouneau, sought the king, and entreated 
him to send away his soldiers, which Henri refused to do. 

Again doth our peacemaker, Queen Catherine, seek the 
lion in his den—Guise in his hotel. The barriers yielded 
to her sedan. She parleyed with the populace, and they 
breached their barricades to her. Guise replied to her, that 
“ the wit of man could not remedy that unhappy day; that it 


120 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


was well known that the Bastile and death had been the 
sentence upon himself.*’ They retired together to an apart¬ 
ment, where she is said to have reproached him sternly, and 
required him instantly to cause the citizens to submit; but 
they parted in anger. The Duchess of Montpensier then 
came forth like an inspired priestess—the soul of Marie 
Stewart had flitted into Catherine of Lorraine, and young 
D’Aumale, the chief of chivalry, by her side. 

Then Henri III. resolved to quit Paris; and in vain 
did the queen mother plead and promise to try again on 
the morrow. Again on the morrow she went, and again the 
barricades were breached for the “ good queen mother who 
made the peace;” but again was Guise obliged to confess 
that the conflagration of men raged beyond his power to 
arrest it. In the meantime Henri fled to Rambouillet; 
angry, but craven, and thoroughly undignified. The news 
of his flight was carried to Guise and Queen Catherine in 
the midst of their conference. He escorted her to her sedan, 
and through the barricades and respectful citizens. She re¬ 
entered the Louvre; there was the Queen Louise, and there 
she was joined by the Duchesses of Nemours and Mont¬ 
pensier, 13th March. 

On the knowledge of the flight Guise and D’Aumale rode 
out, and in twelve hours there was no sign of a barricade. 
The keys of the Bastile were presented to Guise, and those 
of the Port St. Antoine and Paris were left in the possession of 
the Leaguers. Neither Catherine nor Queen Louise departed. 
The Duchess of Guise entered on the 17th, and took up her 
abode at Vincennes, with the Cardinal of Bourbon, Veqdome, 
and the Prince of Joinville; whilst M. de Montpensier 
quitted his stepmother and the Lorraine for the Bourbon 
party, and is henceforth found with Henri of Navarre. 

In the month of May Guise was in full possession of Paris, 
with the Cardinal of Bourbon as the chief of the Bourbons; 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


121 


and they changed the magistrates, and secured full twenty 
towns to the side of the Orthodox faith. To these proceed¬ 
ings Queen Catherine offered determined opposition, whilst 
Guise paid all the deference in his power to her personally. 
The parliament of Paris sent deputies to the king at 
Chartres. The meeting was decent, hut hypocritical on 
both sides, both professing respect to the intentions of the 
other. The Leaguers wished to get the king back to Paris, 
and sent a procession of the Penitents, established by him¬ 
self, to win him back. The absurd procession was scoffed 
at by the peers on Henri’s side—Biron, Montpensier, and 
Crillon. The king sent messengers of his own to the parlia¬ 
ment ; and again a deputation was sent to Chartres. Guise 
induced the queen mother to go herself; but she had no 
influence with her son. She, his mother of seventy years, 
stood , as he received the deputation on his throne, when the 
king yielded to their demands, and dismissed the offensive 
Epernon, and granted hard terms against the Huguenots. 
Queen Catherine then asked her son to return to Paris, and 
received a blunt negative to the proposal. She returned 
alone, having in truth no influence with her son. Epernon 
fortified himself in Angouleme, and Montpensier succeeded 
him with the king, who in the month of June went to 
Eouen, whilst the queen-mother laboured on his behalf at 
Paris. 

In July the Edict of Union was concluded by Catherine 
for the king, and the Duchess of Montpensier was the Ambas¬ 
sadress with her on the side of the League. It was all in 
favour of the Lorraine house personally, and of the League 
generally. It was signed, 21st July, by the king at Rouen; 
yielding to compulsion, but meditating revenge. 

The Spanish Armada was floating by the shores of France, 
and it was pertinent to the matter that Mendoza lauded the 
edict. 


122 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


On the 23 rd July Henri quitted Rouen for Mantes, where 
the two queens rejoined him; and on the 26th he returned 
to Chartres, and Queen Catherine to Paris, she haying 
obtained leave to present Guise and his party to the king. 

Soon they appeared in their family grandeur ; the Cardinal 
of Bourbon with fifty archers in splendid liveries, Guise 
with eighty cavaliers, and the queen mother with a regiment 
of the Guard. Henri received them in state. The queen- 
mother led Guise to kiss the royal hand, and Henri III. was 
gracious; he could dissemble without trouble. But after 
the duke’s departure from the presence, private orders were 
given that none should visit the Guises. 

On the 2nd August they dined together. The king in¬ 
dulged in badinage of the most cutting kind; he was as 
insolent as he dared to be, and Guise had to bear it with 
a sardonic grin. At this time the rumour of the Spanish 
Armada’s conquest passed, prior to that of its defeat. Again 
did Catherine implore her son to revisit Paris, and received 
his reiterated refusal, speaking ever in the most cutting 
irony he could command. On the contrary, he declared his 
intentions to convoke the Estates at Blois at the close of 
September. 

The Duke of Guise and the Duchess of Montpensier now 
consorted much with the king, he indulging in his cunning, 
and Guise being but a bad dissembler. The Duke of Epernon 
was nearly assassinated in his castle at Angouleme; and the 
last act we need adduce is that of King Henri dismissing 
the Chancellor Cheverny and appointing his own, Benoise, 
with every mark of disrespect to the queen mother, who was 
suffering from gout and affliction beneath these offensive 
proceedings of her son. Cheverny was reinstated bv 
Henri IV. 

The month of October arrived, and the Court assem¬ 
bled — a glorious Court; all the beauty and the chivalry 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


123 


of more than two-thirds of France were there. On the 16th 
the members of the Estates met, and the sitting was opened 
with all the pomp of the occasion, Henri breathing Catho¬ 
licism, but with sentences offensive to the Lorraines. Guise 
demanded the suppression of offensive passages, and Queen 
Catherine sided with him. Henri went mad with rage, but 
yielded to necessity, and with his own hands erased the 
passages. At the same time came news of the defection of 
the Duke of Savoy, husband to Queen Catherine’s grand¬ 
daughter, Catarina of Spain, who now sided with the League. 
The Estates then voted the excommunication of the King 
of Navarre, declared him incapable of the succession to the 
crown of France, and urged the confiscation of his duchies 
and his banishment from the realm. Henri refused. 

Then was Christine of Lorraine married to Ferdinand, 
Duke of Tuscany; after which many of the ladies left the 
Court. On the 2nd December the question of finance and 
retrenchment came on, and again the king went mad with 
rage. The history of this time can be extended to any 
length by taking the many versions, but the facts are 
the sole things which will bear strict authentication. The 
facts are, that on Thursday, the 23rd, Guise was inveigled 
into the royal presence at Blois, to be assassinated as he 
went forth; which was successfully put into execution. The 
Cardinal of Bourbon was arrested in bed and imprisoned, so 
also was the Provost of Paris and several deputies. The next 
victim was the Cardinal of Lorraine, likewise murdered 
in cold blood. Beside the bed of the sick queen-mother did 
the Duchess of Nemours, the mother of the slain, and Henri, 
coming from his private chapel, meet to exchange reproaches. 
She and the Duchess D’Aumale (Mary of Lorraine) were 
imprisoned by Henri, regardless of the entreaties of all. 
The queen mother shut herself up in solitude, and refused 
watchers by her bedside. She heard mass on Christmas 


124 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Day in her room by the Cardinal Bishop of Paris. On New 
Year’s Day she was carried to visit the old Cardinal of 
Bourbon; he wept, and embraced and kissed her passionately. 
She also wept, and vainly strove to utter words. She was 
carried thence to bed. On the next day, it is said, but 
erroneously, that she made her will; and so, speechless, she 
passed away, broken hearted, 5th Jan., 1589. 

“ Now doth she sit in widowhood alone, 

Her husband and her sons and daughters gone, 
Marbled in misery; the passing breeze 
Moves not one lock of hair; the colour flees 
Her bloodless countenance; the glazing eye 
Fixed in its moistened lid, the passer by 
Sees nought alive; the tongue takes stony root. 

No gesturing arm, no forward speeding foot; 

No pulse is in the vein, no mobile neck, 

And all within—within is equal wreck; 

She only weeps—still weeps.” 

Fable of Niobe. 
























CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


125 


CHAPTER IV. 

HENRI IV. 

Did the world improve with the demise of Catherine de 
Medici? Did an ameliorated reign follow when the incubus 
of her presence was removed ? Nay, but the contrary: 
there was no longer a benignant queen mother to harbinger 
a peace. Did the remaining Henris, of whom we have yet 
enough, inaugurate an enduring system of peace and justice ? 
Did they rectify manners and uphold sound morals? In 
fine, have we gained aught by loading our victim scape¬ 
goat with the sins of France, and consigning her to the sea 
of time, as the fomenter of all the evils which had occurred ? 
The contrary is the case; though the hand was old and 
despised to which the helm was consigned in the storms, yet 
shipwreck followed the loss of that guiding hand, which had 
saved from the too apparent rocks and shoals on which 
they chose to wreck. Of the wretched Henri III. the tale 
is soon told—a fanatic monk (Clement his name) assassi¬ 
nated him, by dissimulation greater than his own—at St. 
Cloud, on the 1st August, 1589. About seven months after 
the assassinations at Blois, Henri III., the last of the Valois 
kings, yielded the army and throne to the first of the Bourbon 
kings, Henry IV., a man whom it has delighted the world 
to honour and applaud, succeeding to the fallen dynasty and 
vacated throne. The man who builds his house upon the 
sand is, pursuant to our Scriptures, a fool; Henri IV. was 
triply so, for he knew that he built a baseless fabric, and 
yet he preferred his lusts to his kingdom, his family and 
his life. There is an interval of twenty-one years when the 


126 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


old wittol king, chasing to devour a young girl, the Princess 
of Conde, the bride, as his own mistress averred, of his own 
son, was cut off by the knife of Ravaillac, and left behind 
him the scene of chaos and confusion he had foreseen and 
foretold. There is nothing more irreconcileable with reason 
—how Elizabeth Tudor and Henri of Bourbon should bear 
away the applause and praises of the world, whilst Catherine 
de Medici and Charles Stewart depart laden with its blame, 
save upon the theory and hypothesis upon which we started, 
that the vices of the communities—the lust and rapine of 
the feudal powers, and the greed and luxury of the civic, 
required the scapegoat. 

As it is not my intention to uphold the fame of Henry IV., 
but, on the contrary, severely to condemn it, there is no 
better mode of action than to adopt • the Prognostic I find 
recorded by his enemies, of whom I am one, and believe it 
to be a true indictment of the base policy of his reign, and 
of its baseless foundation, The Prognostic is printed in 
the ‘Memoires of Tavannes,’ in the Collection of Petitot, 
xxv. p. 378., to which the collector appends his note to 
remark that it is “ an exaggerated satire of his reign, al¬ 
though one needs confess that there is therein too much of too 
well founded reproach. The situation penible of that great 
prince, the temper (Thumeur) of his wife, excusing many 
faults.” As Queen Marguerite was void of humeur , Queen 
Marie is the queen indicated, and her discontent is set forth 
as a sufficient plea to excuse all the iniquity of that Bearnese 
utterly disreputable human brute. 

Prognostic of the times of Henri Quatre .—“Abase the 
princes and great all he can, hinder their alliances by mar¬ 
riage ; especially with heiresses; keep them closely at court 
that they rebel not afar; forbid them to travel lest their repu¬ 
tation obscure his own. Court the army; but sow envy and 
quarrels in the ranks. Listen to spies of secretaries and 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


127 


their pensionnaries, and so learn what they are about; wheedle 
their wives and relations, to learn what they say; bestow 
the gendarmerie on his children and bastards, and upstarts, 
to whom he may grant companies; grant nothing at the 
request of princes, nor to their dependents, keep them in 
poverty, and so force them to look out officers of the crown to 
do as the king wills; appoint no governors of provinces to have 
local authority; dismantle all the places possible, and give 
them all hostile governors; oppose lieutenants to governors, 
and sow seeds of hatred amidst them. After the Huguenots’ 
plan, give each place three or four co-existent governors, 
Captain of the Castle, Governor of the Town, Sergeant Major, 
and Captain of the Garrison, so that he may always com¬ 
mand one, and they always disagree ; for one lieutenant- 
general to a province appoint four, to squabble ; throw rela- . 
tions and allies to the winds. Fee the judges, and the mere 
there be, the more certain to have a party in the people; 
diminish no subsidy, impost, taille, old or new, we need them 
for wars, and creep up, up, up, insensibly. Make men of low 
birth a d no condition, Rosny, Villeroi, Sillery, Jeannin, and 
such like, counsellors of state, so that what the king wills 
none may dispute; let him appoint learned bishops, lest 
they fear that he hankers after Huguenots, and priors of 
Malta, &c., will be secure with free election from that cause, 
and good benefices will fall to his bastards; the nobility must 
be brought low ; and not only shall duels be permitted, but 
his majesty shall excite and uphold quarrels; blood-letting 
is favourable to peace ; favour the tiers etat, provided never¬ 
theless it injure not the imposts ; the financiers, knowing 
they will be upheld, may rob more and more safely than 
ever. Hold on to both religions without setting them by 
the ears, and let him beware Huguenot disputes; give no 
worthy party either place or profit; spy in the provinces and 
have tools stipendiary to lie perdue; pay only tools and 


128 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


enemies he dreads ; but he will ever he in fear of civil war. 
Maintain Swiss and pay them. War with Flanders and 
Spaniards until their republic be strong and a thorn in the 
side of Spain. Pay the Huguenots good pensions, both 
ministry, and grands; keep Lesdiguieres and Bouillon 
in good hope. Spend a million crowns warring with Spain 
annually, and when the States make peace with Spain, let the 
king pay the garrisons. Down with all fortifications at home, 
the power of France consists of her nobility and cavalry, 
and by no means in citadels. The king shall plunge into 
amours and plurality of women, by means of cash, and for 
heirs and successors. Re-establish Jesuits, for fear of their 
knives and to prove his Catholicity; divide the Huguenots 
in three—royalists, governors, and ministers; oppose them 
secretly one to the other, and let not one know what the 
other receives. Remove all faithful patriots or employ them 
otherwise. Throw dust into the eyes of the Pope touching 
the Huguenots; tell him you only deceive them , on the 
other hand, tell them you only deceive him. Make prepara¬ 
tion for war, and spread fearful reports. Lodge the cash in 
the Bastille, with lots of arms against the rising of the 
oppressed.” 

We must dismiss the twenty-two years of Henri IV., to 
see the result in his successor. Unlike Queen Catherine, 
who made progresses equally through the peaceful provinces 
and the barricades of Paris, which opened to their well-beloved 
queen mother, and through which she passed escorted by 
both sides, Henri, as also Queen Elizabeth of England, 
continually and loudly complain of the never-ceasing at¬ 
tempts' upon their lives; and the lists of deaths and im¬ 
prisonments of the last years of either reign are frightful 
and appalling. Queen Elizabeth’s is horrible: the lists in¬ 
clude the names of their best followers—Biron ‘and Essex. 
In many other instances might Henri and Elizabeth com- 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


129 


pare in parallel. He was a borrower of money and she was 
a lender ; but with this proviso, that she receive i security, 
which she held fast and transmitted to her successor. Henri 
spent his revenues as quickly as Sully created them; palaces 
and parks, mistresses and hounds,. swallowed up sums he 
dreamed not of until Sully charmed his ears with bidding 
him guess “how much,” and adding “more and more.” 
We may almost dismiss the king in the minister, who has 
also written the condemnation of both in his heart-flaying 
memoirs. Sully portrays himself as a detective, bully, 
pandar, and cheat. We have scenes with both Queen Eli¬ 
zabeth and King James, whom he came over to entrap 
and beguile, complaining with absurd inconsistency of the 
bad faith of the English ministers in trying to deceive him. 
But as Sully could see through brick walls and oaken planks, 
and all hearts were open to him, I see not what cause he had 
to exclaim so loudly as he vents his despair of complaint that 
he cannot cheat unchecked. His memoires are too well 
known to need citing. I wish in the restricted space of this 
work to give a specimen of each of the actors, that from 
the specimen we may get a view of the man. Book xxiii. 
1606, gives us a scene of Henri’s life and manners. He had 
been scattering money in jewels and in play; a 1200 crown 
jewel to one lady, 85504 livres to Madlle. de Beuil, and 
2000 pistoles’ at play; when, having passed these accounts, 
Sully visits and awaits with Madame de Guise until Henri 
returns from the chase. 

Towards midday he returned extremely well satisfied 
in gaiety of humour, which his good health and happy ad¬ 
vices contributed to increase; he entered the great hall 
holding the partridges in his hands, and cried to Coquet, 
“Coquet, Coquet, you must not complain of Rochelaure 
Thermes and me for want of a dinner, we have brought 
the needful for a feast, but go get them dressed; let eight 

K 


130 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


be reserved for my wife and me; Bonneval shall take them 
to her, and shall tell her that I am going to drink her 
health, hut take care and keep those birds that are torn by 
the hawks; there are three very fat, which I took myself, 
scarcely torn. 

After the dinner Sully entered from the Duchess of 
Guise. “ You have made haste, you cannot have come from 
the arsenal,” said Henri. I told him where I had dined. 
“ Ah, if they follow your counsels, as they say they will do, 
they will never do an injury to my person or state.” “ Sire,” 
returned I, “ your majesty says this in a manner so unre¬ 
served that 1 see you are in a good humour, and better 
satisfied with me than you have been these fifteen days.” 
“ I have not,” said Henri with great gaiety, “ found myself 
so light and so easy these three months ; I mounted my horse 
without help, my hawks have flown and my greyhounds run 
well. I have taken many young partridges and three hares ; 
my lost hawk is retrieved; I have a good appetite, have 
eaten excellent melons, I have dined off excellent fat quails: 
from Provence I hear that the sedition at Marseilles is quelled; 
the season is fruitful, my people rich if I suffer exportation 
of corn; the Prince of Wales promises me friendship; I 
have reconciled the Pope and the Venetians; the King of 
Sweden is all right with his subjects; the Landgrave of 
Hesse acquires friends; Spaniards and Flemings are brought 
low, and I must needs be their mediator, and the arbitrator 
of Christendom. Behold me, surrounded by all these (all 
sycophants, the Jesuit Father Cotton was one) of whose 
affections I am assured, and who are capable to amuse me; 
and when we have dined, then to satisfy all if reason and 
justice can do it.” 

Then the conversation turned upon his person and upon 
his great qualities, and upon his good fortune. “ It would 
be difficult,” said I, “ to find better judges than they were.” 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


131 


He confessed that all their praises did not destroy his con¬ 
sciousness that he had many faults, for his miserable moments 
had surpassed his happy ones. I maintained that I had been 
a witness that he enjoyed less tranquillity in peace than in 
war. “ Rosny,” he replied, “ put that upon paper, that I 
may show it to incredulous persons.” . . . The queen 
entered; the king, rising from table, went to meet her, 
saying: “ Well, my dear, were not the melons, partridges, 
and quails I sent you very good; if your appetite has been 
as keen as mine you have dined extremely well. I never 
ate so much as I have to-day, or was ever in a better humour. 
Ask Rosny, he will tell you the occasion, the news received, 
and the conversation we have had.” The queen was also 
cheerful. “ How charmed I am to see, you in this humour, 
my dear; I beseech you let us always live together in this 
manner.” 

It is difficult to write of these disreputable men with 
sentiments and sensuality as frivolous as they are disgraceful. 
There were no nobles present; he was surrounded by syco¬ 
phants, and stuffing himself with quails, melons, and flattery, 
with which, in despite of a good constitution, he is constantly 
harming himself. The nobility are all fled; we find the 
Duchess of Guise (the widowed Catherine of Cleves) there 
affording a haven of rest to both Sully and Henri, an oasis in 
the desert. The prognostic is a true bill; his court was a 
brothel and haunt of pandars from which good men fled. 
Sully had the bull-dogging of them; he had at one time 
three on him at once—Henriette, De Moret, and Des Essarts, 
and the place was a hell from which Sully relieved him by 
fitting up the arsenal for his menu plaisirs, and laying out 
rouleaux for him to lose at dice and cards. Sully treated 
him as an Irishman treats his pig—lures him on by dropped 
peas and beans the way he wished him to go, or as a spoilt 
child who could only be kept quiet by sweetmeats. 

k 2 


132 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


To write of Henri IY. and omit his harem is not possible; 
it is a subject-matter which thrusts itself forward; it is also 
of consequence because it has cast its malignant shade on the 
prior court of Queen Catherine, and on that magnificent 
galaxy of dames who, I am assured, deserve all praise and 
admiration. 

Both the queens of Henri are condemned for their 
humeur. for not acquiescing joyfully at the breed of batards , 
and it is laid as blpme to their charge that they condemned 
and resented it. It is difficult to reason on a point when 
such premisses are laid down, subversive of all our moral 
notions of right and wrong. But pursuant to Sully and 
Perefixe it was utterly unreasonable either in Marguerite of 
Valois or Marie de l^Iedici to resent a state of things as dis¬ 
gusting as it was pernicious and brutal. The amount of 
mental misery that Henri caused by his vicious lust is 
beyond the reach of calculation. High-spirited and, by 
nature, noble souls, Gabrielle and Henriette were torn from 
their promised husbands; they and Jacqueline de Beuil 
and Charlotte des Essarts were the four by whom he had 
acknowledged and titled issue to rebel against his lawful 
son. He lured two abbesses from their spheres, the 
Abbess of Montmartre and the Abbess de Poissy, whilst he 
besieged Paris, and cast them back disgraced. He had, 
at the age of sixteen, Mad. de Guiche, and the famed 
Corisande, in his mother’s court; and afterwards Mile. 
Dayelle in his sister’s court; poor little Fosseuse in his 
wife’s court; and, as it is thought and said, Mad. de Sauve 
in his mother-in-law’s court; .besides which he chased the 
sisters—the younger sisters—of both Gabrielle and Henriette, 
and was only repelled by vigilance and force by the fathers 
and brothers, and he was slain whilst on the determined 
savage pursuit of the Princess of Conde, who found a refuge 
with the Archduchess Clara Eugenie, granddaughter of Queen 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


133 


Catherine; when the knife of Ravaillac stopped the vile chase 
she was only seventeen. La Fosseuse was but fourteen, 
and all these children were dazzled at the presumed 
splendour of the position of mistress, and would have been 
pleased to have added to the number of his victims, and 
shared in the spoil of the cost. The child La Fosseuse bore 
him a son at fourteen, and imagined herself the mother 
of the future king of Navarre—so she aspired in thought. 
But although she was not thrust forth, like Hagar, into the 
desert, by Queen Marguerite, yet, as we never hear again of 
her or of her child, I think her name is ominous of her fate 
and end, and she hugs her child in their early grave. 

Madame de Sauve is evidently a woman of quite another 
stamp than a sensual one. We find her an honoured lady of 
the court from youth to age; the wife of De Sauve, and sub¬ 
sequently of De Nourmetier, and reputed to have charmed 
Anjou, Alengon, Henri of Navarre, and Guise. This is a 
little trop fort , and upsets all ethics of love and gallantry. 
Marguerite rightly called her a Circe. Circe punished 
sensuality, as in the companions of Ulysses. We find no 
fighting of gallants or cutting of throats in the apartments 
of Madame Nourmetier, but all run there for intellectual 
political advices. Sully writes of her and Madame d’Uzez, 
“ they were better acquainted with the Queen-Mother’s inten¬ 
tions than any others, and loved me so tenderly, they called 
me son fils.” Her superiority was in intellect, and in her 
position at court; and therein lay the homage which so many 
paid to her, and she lost no fame save in the malevolence of 
those who hated, or who envied her and maligned her. 

There was that wonderful lady, Chateauneuf, who was the 
morgenatic mistress of Henri III., but who was deposed when 
he accepted the crown of Poland, and when he wedded 
Louise of Yaudemont of Lorraine. The story of this dame 
fs a caution to gallants, and may show that love is not with- 


134 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


out danger in the courts of kings. Turenne was assigned to 
her, of whom he records what he intended to be gratefully— 
that from her he learnt all that a nobleman needed for a 
courtier’s career. He writes that the Marechal d’Anville 
assigned him to her for instruction—“whom I served as 
diligently as my liberty and youth permitted. I was desirous 
to please and to remember as much as my tutor permitted. 
She returned my care, and pointed out to me all that I did 
uncourtly and uncivil, and that with the native gravity of 
her disposition, and none other so aided and instructed me 
in courtly manners as did she. I cannot disapprove this 
custom, since thus the courtier only sees and does .praise¬ 
worthy deeds ” (It is the Calvinist noble who is recording 
this) ; “ and to avoid uncourtly manners. Those who followed 
not this custom were considered to be badly instructed and 
of a clumsy conversation. Since then there has been 
effrontery, scandals, and freedoms of speech which has thrust 
forth virtue and modestyto wit, under Henri IY. and his 
pandar-general Sully. This lady was beloved by Henri III. 
when Anjou; it was the equivalent to morgenatic marriage 
he accorded her, and departing for Poland he attempted to 
assign her in marriage to the Sieur de Castellaine, who 
declined the honour. It is related that this virago, meeting 
him on the highway, revenged the slight by riding over and 
horsewhipping him. She subsequently married one Antinotti, 
and him she killed with her own hand for presumed infidelity 
to her. On his return from Poland Henri III. would have 
placed this fierce amazon by the side of his queen Louise, 
when again the aid of the Queen-Mother was invoked, and 
the fair lady obliged to withdraw from the court. 

Bussy d’Amboise, who had borne Queen Marguerite’s 
colours, was likewise slain in a midnight adventure; and 
these instances are only cited to show what these ladies 
were like, and not to be lightly regarded:— 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


135 


“ Unblest the man who listens to their song, 

In verdant meads they sport—but widely round 
Lie human bones that bleach upon the ground— 

Fly that polluted shore.” 

But the real king of the position was Sully. He “ and his 
king” banished and expelled the nobles, and planted himself 
and his family and friends in their stead. He was brazen- 
browed, and refused no work, whether to coerce Catherine 
de Bourbon to wed with the heir of Lorraine and resign 
Soissons; whether to treat with Queen Marguerite for 
the divorce they desired; whether to purchase or pay-off 
mistresses, or to betray Biron at home, or bamboozle Queen 
Elizabeth and King James abroad. Whether to turn out all 
the farmers of revenue, and interpolate himself, or to depose 
the marshals and capture Montemelier in their very despite. 
For a score of years this man was all in all: a thorough 
mole, working secretly even with the king, and hiding the 
amount of treasure (forty millions of livres, in 1610) even 
from Henri himself. Are not his memoires written? and 
does he not accuse the nobles of arrogance and pride; 
and Queen Elizabeth, Cecil, and King James, in their turns, 
of deceit ? I will confine myself to three anecdotes of him ; 
1st, his choice of his first wife; 2nd, his treatment of the 
ladies of honour when his guests; 3rd, his interview and 
treaty with King James. He disappears from the scene in 
1611, and all the castles in the air in which he was indulging 
left but their wrack behind. He was too great to lie in a 
single tomb. One monument records, “ Here lie the bowels 
of the most high, most puissant, and most illustrious lord, 
Maximilian de Bethune, Duke of Sully, Peer and Marshal of 
France.” Another tomb records his many titles. 

“ The Turk that two and fifty kingdoms hath 
Writes not so tedious a style as this.” 


136 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Talbot and Marlborough—Wolsey and Mazarin—mate 
not his titles; nor, qucere, his wealth. He lived until his 
eighty-second year, and his duchess, Rachel de Cochfilet, 
lived until the age of ninety-seven, managing her estates, 
working tapestry, and washing altar-linen with her own 
hands. 

In his choice of his wife—this is his own recital:— 
“ Obliged by the nature of the employment I had undertaken 
to frequent the court (sad Calvinist), and in the prime of 
strength and age, it is not strange that I should pay the 
accustomed tribute to love. I became violently enamoured 
of the daughter of the president, St Mesmin, one of the 
most beautiful ladies in France; at first I wholly abandoned 
myself to the delightful passion, and when afterwards 
reflecting that the alliance was not convenient for me, I 
would have stifled it. I was unable to do so when opposed 
by the friendship of the family, the esteem of the father, and 
the charms of the daughter ; nor could I alone have broken 
the charm. La Fond (his valet), to divert my purpose, pro¬ 
posed to me to visit Mile, de Courtenay, to whom he wished 
me to sue, as a partie more suitable. I saw her, approved the 
choice, but Mile, de St. Mesmin destroyed the wise reflections. 
One day, at St. Nogent on the Seine, with La Fond, at an 
inn, chance conducted thither both Mile, de St. Mesmin and 
Mile, de Courtenay : this was a delicate conjuncture. I con¬ 
sidered it impossible to leave without breaking for ever with 
that lady to whom I did not go first; and in such cases no 
artifice or address could satisfy them both. Mile, de St. 
Mesmin’s younger sister found mo on the stairs absorbed in 
reflection, endeavouring to reconcile reason with love. With 
all the vivacity of her wit she strove to draw me to her 
sister’s feet. La Fond approached and whispered in my 
ear, “ Turn to the right, Monsieur; you will .find a large 
estate, regal extraction, equal beauty.” These words, so 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


137 


seasonably uttered, fixed nay wavering purpose. I was con¬ 
vinced in two years the beauty of the one would equal that 
of the other. I sent an excuse for not visiting Mile, de St. 
Mesmin, which drew upon me great reproaches; but I 
sustained the assault, visited Mile, de Courtenay, who valued 
the sacrifice at full price. I applauded myself and ... we 
were married.” And as the rule almost of such early 
marriages, we find her die five years subsequently. He then 
married a widow, Madame de Chateaupers, who survived 
him, and lived to ninety-seven years. 

The small respect he showed to ladies shows itself con¬ 
stantly, as well as the coarseness of his own mind. He had 
the honour to receive the king and Queen Marie on her entry 
into Paris, when he remarks—“ A young man named Concini, 
and a young girl called Leonora Galigai, accompanied her. 
The king next day brought the queen and all the court to 
the arsenal to dine with me. The queen was attended by 
all her Italian ladies, who, being pleased with the wine of 
Arbois, drank more of it than was requisite. I had some 
excellent white wine that was as clear as rock water. I 
ordered some decanters to be filled with it, and when the 
ladies asked for water to temper the burgundy they were 
presented with this liquor. The king suspected by their 
gaiety that I had played them a trick,” 

The third anecdote is of deeper import. Sully had, in 
1601, crossed over to England for the purpose of ferreting 
the intentions of Queen Elizabeth. At her death he again 
crossed and had an interview, 23rd June, with James, and 
thanked him that it was without reserve and without wit¬ 
nesses that he was so admitted, when in fact each hoped to 
ferret out and circumvent the other. But James rather hit 
him too hard by requiring repayment of the loans, and by 
putting off the discussion until the 29th, but which afforded 
Sully an interim interview with Cecil, on the 27th, when 


138 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Cecil was the speaker. Sully, who thought himself open and 
candid when be was most secret and plotting, avers that he 
was instantly sensible of the secretary’s artifice; but Cecil 
replied that he had no surreptitious designs, &c. Sully 
proceeded: “ I gave Cecil to understand, by smiling at his 
last words, that he had laid his snare for me in vainand 
adds, “ that they thanked him for the sincerity with which 
he had spoken.” So did this war of wits commence, and 
Sir Robert Cecil was the sharper witted of the two. 

On the 29 th the conversation was resumed. James and 
Sully dining together, with Beaumont only present, when 
James spoke of the late Queen of England with some sort of 
contempt, and averred that he had long governed; directing 
the council and the ministers, by whom he had been better 
served and obeyed than she had been. Sully next saw the 
Hollander Barnevelt and Cecil together. “ I told Barnevelt 
that he should have been careful to have asked only what 
could be granted, and I asked Cecil, in a manner somewhat 
peremptory, what were the real intentions of his master 
on the point. ... I was very dissatisfied at his pur¬ 
posely evading the state of the question, and anticipating 
difficulties; but I concealed my indignation, &c. . . . Cecil 
in this conference showed what he really was, using only 
double expressions, vague proposals, and false meanings, 
the moderation and sincerity with which I opposed his sub¬ 
tleties put him to confusion.” But Cecil hit Sully harder 
still when he wanted back the Elizabethan loan; there was 
no subtlety there. 

Sully then had a third audience in private with the king. 
I complained to him of his ministers, and told him it was 
more advantageous to confer with him personally than with 
his council. Moreover, he complained of the demand to 
repay the loan; that it was sad, after having filled sheets of 
eulogy to Henri, to have to write in the contrary style. He 


CATHERINE HE MEDICI. 


139 


adds—“ It was no difficult matter to inspire the king with a 
diffidence of his ministers.” 

“I thought I plainly perceived that, from the praises I 
had lavished upon him, or the diffidence I had evinced, that 
he was in the favourable disposition I required. I therefore 
broached my subject with some general hints of a project by 
which, with his assistance, the peace of Europe might he 
secured. ‘Well, sir,’ said James, ‘I will break off my 
party for the chase, and hear you to the end.’ ” 

I resumed the discourse—that a man holding the places 
and honours which I held never quitted his post without 
urgent occasion. That my commission was only to require 
an union between England and France; hut from the fame 
of the genius and abilities of King James, I had resolved to 
discourse with him on matters infinitely more considerable. 
I could not reveal it without exposing myself to ruin, unless 
he would engage by the most solemn oath to keep it a secret. 
James, who listened to me with profound attention, hesitated at 
taking the oath, but endeavoured to discover the subject with¬ 
out doing so; but failing, he gave me at last the most sacred 
and solemn of oaths. I mean that of the Holy Sacrament. 

Here are two as pretty noodles as ever made fools of one 
another sitting in conclave—one open-mouthed, and the other 
full of his own self-conceit and wisdom. This is the man 
who has complained of the insincerity of the council, and 
who was all honour and probity himself. Let me draw a 
precis of Sully’s notions and proposal, for they are sufficiently 
foolish and amusing for a fairy tale, and such as is told by a 
septuagenarian nurse to a three-year-old child. It is, in two 
words, to remodel Europe. 

By an alliance between England, France, and Holland to 
drive Austria from French borders and to lower her power, 
therefore to propitiate by the spoil the Duke of Savoy and 
the princes of Germany. To create Savoy into a kingdom, 




140 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


and to divide Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, Moravia, and 
Silesia, re-estalisliing their ancient privileges; and that the 
pope might he gained by granting him the property of those 
countries of which he only possessed the feodality :— 

That France should retain no conquests. 

That Europe is divided into two factions—Catholic and 
Protestant. 

The Catholic—Spain, Spanish Flanders, part of Germany, 
Switzerland, Savoy, Italy, Florence, Ferrara, Mantua, Modena, 
Parma, Geneva, and Lucca; besides Jesuits and Catholics 
everywhere. 

The Protestant — France, England, Scotland, Ireland, 
Denmark and Sweden, Venice and the United Provinces. 
Parts of Germany, omitting Poland, Prussia, Muscovy, 
Livonia, and Transilvania, because they are checked by the 
Turks. 

That Spain, with the East and West Indies, was enormous, 
although the New World divided her power. 

The Pope is in real servitude to Spain, and the Jesuits 
only falsely aid him, and 

The Emperor hates him. 

That Hungary, Bohemia, and Austria are empty names ex¬ 
posed to the Turk; besides the Emperor was soon going to die. 

That Germany and Switzerland wished to cast off his 
yoke and peculate his realms. 

Where is the prince, jealous of glory, who would refuse to 
ally with France, England, Sweden, and Denmark com¬ 
bined? Queen Elizabeth had averred that nothing could 
resist those four powers in alliance. 

Then for the acts and deeds to be done. 

To chase Spain from Flanders, and erect a free and 
independent republic, easily effected; that they should com¬ 
prehend Liege, Juliers, and Cleves, secure this triangle from 
Spain, and coerce the towns by threats to submit. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


141 


But France and England must keep clean hands, and 
therefore — 

Franche-Compte, Alsace, and Tirol must fall to the 
Switzers. 

The Duke of Savoy should have Lombardy erected into a 
kingdom. 

The kingdom of Naples should be given to the Pope as 
convenient to him. 

Sicily, Istria, and Friuli to the Venetians. 

Then for the means; that the proposition did not admit of 
such frivolous considerations as the debts of France and 
Flanders to England. . . . “I touched James in his most 
sensible part—his ambition to immortalize his memory and 
to be brought into comparison with Henri.” 

This statement took up four hours. James embraced 
Sully. James then took the wise precaution of equally 
insisting on secrecy, “ or even putting on paper certain 
things which upon this occasion he revealed to me, and 
which I therefore suppress.” 

The weary and impatient ministers were then called in, 
and we are called upon to credit the following as what 
occurred. James reproached Cecil in very strong terms for 
having, in word and actions, acted contrary to his commands. 
« Cecil, I command you, without any reply or objection, in 
conformity to this my design, to prepare the necessary 
writings according to which I will then give the dexter (oath 
by the right hand) and all assurances to the ambassadors of 
Messieurs the States. Then, turning to me, and taking me 
by the hand he said, “ Well, M. Ambassadeur, are you now 
perfectly satisfied with me ? ” 

It is some relief to the reader to learn in the next chapter 
that this was done solely of Sully’s own head. It is con¬ 
solatory to look on it like a trance or Sibyl leaves. We have 
another interview to bamboozle us of the “frivolous con- 


142 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


sideration” of the debts owing to us for the privilege of 
readjusting the boundaries of Europe, and chasing from the 
confines of France such petty potentates as Spain and the 
Emperor, and placing stronger in their stead. Sully in his 
fool’s paradise goes and prepares the form for a treaty. It is 
a complicated matter, but hovers over the debt owed by 
France to England. If Flanders were attacked, England to 
provide the men and France the money, deducting from the 
debt owed to England. If England should be attacked 
France to aid her, deducting the cost from the debt. If 
France, England to aid and to forego the debt, and England 
to furnish a fleet to harass the West Indies and Spain; all 
payments of debts to be suspended, and each power to defray 
its own expenses in case of a general war. 

Having succeeded in winning the private ear, Sully machi¬ 
nated to win back the debt owing to England, which James 
signed, Sully complaining at the same time of the chicanery 
of British statesmen. 

The moral of this tale is very effective. Sully wanted 
four years to raise the means, which, as fast as he raised 
them, Henri spent on mistresses, dogs, and hunting boxes, 
until in the last year of Henri’s life he, instead of attaching 
his neighbours, was attached by the Emperor, who chose to 
consider the duchy of Cleves as a male fief belonging to the 
empire. When Sully urged him to go to war to repel 
the advance of the emperor on the boundaries, Henri ejacu¬ 
lated, “Ah, if I had but money enough.” “How much 
do you think you have, sire ?” replied I. “ Have I 
twelve millions?” “A little more,” said I. “How, four¬ 
teen?” Going on by two millions at a time, I answering 
“ a little more ” till he came to thirty millions, when he 
embraced me in a transport of joy,” and Sully told him that 
he had forty millions—very likely he had more, for Sully 
could not have told all the truth, it was contrary to his 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


143 


nature. So to war they went, or Sully went himself, the 
dictator. Vendome and Sully’s son squabbling, and Henri 
commanding them to love one another and act in unison. 
They waited for the springtide of 1611. Sully striking his 
annual medal, Suo se pondere fulcit. Henri opened his 
cabinet, and showed the medals to Soissons and the Cardinal 
of Joyeuse, who straightway flattered Sully for his belles- 
lettres , “seldom found united with the complete statesman 
and soldier.” 

On the 15th March all was ready under a Sully adminis¬ 
tration. My son put himself at the head of the train of 
artillery, “ such as France had never before seen, and perhaps 
never will again.” I prepared to follow with eight millions 
of money, my brother was to be sent to Rome. And all 
unknown names are sent here and there, whilst all the old 
French nobility stay behind with the queen, who was named 
regent, and with much difficulty screwed her coronation 
from Henri ere he departed, which was to have been per¬ 
formed on the 16th May, the malicious world averring that 
he was going to war to recover the Princess of Conde, when 
the king foregoing his usual ventre St. Gris , swore “ by God 
that he would have her back; no one can or shall hinder 
it, not even God’s lieutenant upon earth.” At the ceremony 
of the coronation no man cried God save the king when the 
largesse was scattered. Henri’s soul is expressed as fore¬ 
boding of his doom ; the old nobility were all aloof, Sully’s 
sycophants surrounded him, and on the 17th, at 4 o’clock, 
the knife of Ravaillac changed the programme. Henri was 
murdered. 

So died Henri IV., who has left his name conjoined with 
the epithet the Great. He obtained that from Roman 
Catholic France, because he renounced Calvinism for the 
orthodox church, and because in unwillingly according 
the Edict of Nantes he did it in conjunction with re- 


144 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


establishing the Jesuits, whom he upheld to keep the 
Huguenots in check. We accord him the epithet, because 
we associate his name with Calvinism, and because he was 
the political associate, so long as it suited us, of Queen 
Elizabeth’s administration. Thus he gains his title from 
opposite causes, in which he deceived and disappointed all 
sides. He suffered during his reign misrule to run riot. 
Duels, satires, libels, infidelities, murders, had a licensed 
reign of ten years. The law of Leviticus and Deutero¬ 
nomy was put in force inexorably for breach of marriage 
vows, sorcery and brutality among the people ; and dire 
were the instances of private hate and revenge and murder 
which under these heads fell on the population of Paris. 
He left a chaos of misrule behind him, and the revoca¬ 
tion of the edict of Nantes, which belongs to Louis XIV., 
was conjoined with the suppression of the Jesuits and the 
repeal of the cruel laws of witchcraft, sorcery, and abomina¬ 
tion. Religion had not one iota to do with the matter of the 
Edict, or its revocation; both were political not religious 
steps. Neither is it possible to trace in the general and 
exaggerated stories of the time the amount of beneficence or 
suffering caused by either step. The reign of Louis XIY. is 
a sufficient guarantee that no soldier, artizan, or peasant 
would have been chased from France, neither would they 
have willingly quitted France in the zenith of her glory; 
we know that the bands of the Huguenots, then called 
Camisards, were conquered by Villars, and that Le Cavalier, 
their chief, refuged and died in Chelsea. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


145 




CHAPTER Y. 

MARIE DE MEDICI. 

The regency of Queen Marie de Medici is very nearly tlie 
counterpart, as queen mother, of the regency of Queen 
Catherine : the elements of both the reigns coincide, and 
the like difficulties were cast in the path of both. First was 
the mistaken injunction of their departed husbands to uphold 
the Jesuits, and at the same time to keep the Guises down. 
The Jesuits were to counterbalance the Huguenots in the 
state, and the tribe of bdtards to counterbalance the dreaded 
Guises. To these blunders of Henri II. and Henri IY. may 
mainly be attributed the ills that overwhelmed their widows, 
for in both instances the Guises were the sole adherents 
ever true to the throne, whilst the Huguenots were the first 
to invade the feeble throne, and to plunder, if unable to 
subvert it. It may roundly be asserted that obedience to the 
jealous fears of their lords was the main rock on which the 
queen mothers wrecked : the faithful dogs chased away, the 
fold was thrown open to the wolves. 

Henri IY. is recorded to have addressed his wife, when 
she resented his addressing her as Madame la regente; he 
replied, thus: “ You are right to wish that our years may be 
coequal, for the end of my life will be the commencement of 
your trouble. You wept because I whipped your son too 
severely, but hereafter you will weep for his miseries more 
than your own. My mistresses displease you, but they will 
trouble you more when I am gone. I foresee, marking your 
firm disposition, and foreseeing his, that hereafter you will 
come to extremities.” He then enunciated his pernicious 
counsels; of which, it may shortly be said, the dogmas were 
as bad as they could be. 


L 


146 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


1st. Not to change her ministry. 

2nd. Not to trust to external aid. 

3rd. To respect the rights of the Parliament. 

4th. To control her temper. 

5th. To respect the Jesuits. 

6th. To subject the nobles. 

He proposed Christine of Lorraine for his son’s, Louis XIII., 
wife, and despite the bluster of his droit de naissance , he 
forced his alliances with that house through great cruelty, 
his sister Catherine with the Duke de Bar, and young 
Yendome with Mile, de Mercceur. The Salique law troubled 
him as it multiplied the daughters and grandsons of the 
Valois-Lorraines whom he feared. He also imposed his 
daughter Verneuil on the House of Montmorenci, and com¬ 
mended the whole to his sycophant ministry—Sully, Villeroi, 
Sillery, and Jeannin. 

This bequest opens with a first injunction not to change 
her ministry. We will let Sully tell his own tale, which 
with the crushing remarks of Richelieu, and the banter of 
L’Etoile—crush the fame of the upstart and speak trumpet- 
tongued in favour of the murdered Biron; whose forty-two 
wounds did not save him from the block, nor Sully’s forty- 
two manors and titles hold him one instant to his master’s 
house. “ Give me my cloak and boots, saddle my best 
horses, for I will not use a coach, and bid my gentlemen 
hold themselves in readiness to accompany me.” Attended by 
150, he met messengers from the Court, urging his attend¬ 
ance ; but as he went billets were thrust into his hands, 
bidding him to beware of treachery, to take care of himself. 
“ My train had now increased to 300 horse. ... I stopped 
short, and after consulting with my chief followers, I 
thought it most prudent to return and send my duty and 
service to the queen. Assuring her that I would attend to 
the Arsenal and Ordnance; re-entering the Rue St. Antoine, 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


117 


a messenger from the queen entreated me to go instantly to 
the Louvre with few attendants on matters of moment. 
This proposition to go alone to the Louvre to put myself in 
the hands of my enemies, did not remove my suspicions; 
besides I learnt that an exempt with archers, had been sent to 
the Arsenal and the Temple—where was the powder, and 
some to the Exchequer to stop all monies there. I drew so 
unfavourable an augury that I did not hesitate on my answer 
to the queen. She sent again Messieurs. . . . and after 
them my brother. I was perplexed by this importunity, my 
suspicions were increased, I was resolute not to go. I was in 
no physical condition. ... I was in a sweat. . . . my 
garments were wet. I changed my shirt and went to bed, 
when I reached the Bastille where I resolved to remain until 
the morrow. The Constable and the Duke of Epernon 
visited me, offering their services, and from their manner I 
deemed I might visit the queen without running any danger. 
I yielded to their proposals to visit the Louvre on the 
morrow with few followers. Three hundred awaited my 
coming out—all either relations, friends, or adherents afraid 
to quit me too precipitately. I thanked them and explained 
why I went with my domestic train of twenty only. . . . 
When I came into the queen’s presence, we broke into tears : 
she ordered the young king to be brought in: I remember 
not what words we said, but we closely embraced. 6 My son,’ 
said the queen mother, ‘ love M. de Sully, he was one of the 
best and truest servants of your father. I entreat him to 
serve you as he did him.’ But Sully knew that all protesta¬ 
tions were unreal, and that the nobles hated him and his.” 

The morning after the assassination the Parliament met; 
the queen was declared Regent, and the king held his first 
bed of justice to confirm the nomination. “ I made every 
excuse I could think of to avoid it, and feigned myself ill 
and in bed; but I was obliged to give the queen this satis- 

l 2 


148 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


faction for she importuned me incessantly. Thither he went 
but took no part, save marshalling all in due rank, and the 
queen was proclaimed with no dissentient voice.” 

The queen strictly adhered to her husband’s injunctions, 
save as to Conchini and Eleanor, his wife ; she called up the 
ministry of Henri IV., including the Jesuit Father Cotton, 
to her secret council; but to the public council the peers 
were summoned. Oil and vinegar, where Jeannin “ loud 
and obstinate,” begins to rat to the nobles. And Sully per¬ 
ceived with an intuitive eye that his reign was over. “ One 
of my people, Arnaud, had the insolence to say to me that I 
did wrong to afflict myself; that the sums in the exchequer 
would no more be wasted in buildings, gaming, dogs, birds, 
and mistresses. I called him, in my emotion, base, threatened 
to strike him, and banished him my presence.” 

The Count of Soissons, with Conchini, opened the rebellion, 
and in the council, notwithstanding the countenance of the 
queen, Sully finds himself fallen. “ I returned home full of 
grief, I said to Madame de Sully that we were about to fall 
under the dominion of Spain and the Jesuits. I was in a 
profound reverie all dinner time. The Bishop of Mont¬ 
pelier visited me in secrecy, and I let him out by a private 
door. I have heard more news. I told my wife—a council 
has been held at the nuncio Ubaldini’s; they condemned, 
they scorned, the designs of the deceased king, and they 
treated me no better. It was resolved to change the pro¬ 
posals and alliances, to address the Pope and be guided by 
him, to ally with Spain and down with the Huguenots.” “ If 
I am wise I shall imitate the beaver, resign my posts, and 
employments—withdraw my money or what I can redeem of 
it, purchase some strong castle in a distant province, and 
hold the remainder for the exigencies which will happen.” 

“ Whilst we were conversing, the Duke of Rohan, the two 
Bethunes, my brother, my cousin, my son, and some of my 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


149 


intimate friends entered, to whom I imparted my intelligence 
and my resolution. They maintained the intelligence to be 
untrue that I was about to take a step ungrateful to the 
State, the late king, my benefactor, and his children. “ Is it 
your desire,” said I, “ that I should sacrifice myself for the 
public, my family, and my friends ? for I see plainly your 
advice springs from your self interests. I will do so, since 
you desire it; but mark this concession will do you no good, 
whilst it will bring trouble, loss, and disgrace on me. I will 
show you how.” 

He resolved to send Arnaud to Conchini to offer his 
services to co-operate with him. Arnaud was to tell 
Concbini be, Sully, bore him no ill will for his good fortune, 
and that he held with the queen the like position I had held 
with the late king: that it was an event ordered by Provi¬ 
dence. . . . that I was sincerely disposed to unite myself 
with him, and I offered him my friendship, and requested 
his. “ Go, I said, to Arnaud, and deliver my message, I am 
much deceived if these gentlemen do not find by the answer 
that there is nothing for me to expect.” Arnaud returned in 
an hour, and began to cry up the praises of Conchini. “ Tell 
me plainly, for I could not contain my passion, what you and 
he said to one another.” Shaking his head, and smiling 
malignantly, he answered, that entering Conchini’s, he met 
the President Jeannin, and his own brother Arnaud coming 
out, but that they did not address one another. He was 
introduced to Conchini by one Vincense, who said, “ What, 
Monsieur Arnaud, are you come to visit me ? ” when he made 
him the compliment and delivered the message. Here 
Arnaud stopped; but resumed; that Conchini appeared to 
give little attention to his words. He replied in bad French 
and proud accent, “ How! M. Arnaud, the Duke of Sully 
expects to govern the affairs of France as he did in the late 
king’s time ? The queen now rules; I would advise him to 


150 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


be guided by her will, for my wife and self we need no 
assistance or favour. We have faithfully served the queen, 
and she esteems us.” . . . My company who had not expected 
an answer so rude and insolent stared upon one another, but 
did not utter a word. “ Well gentlemen,” said I, “ do you 
think I can possibly keep my appointments with honour, or 
continue at the head of affairs ? ” The Prince of Conde 
then entered Paris at the head of 1500 horse. Sully veered 
from the Jesuits to the Huguenots again; but the queen cast 
cold looks on his proposal to treat with the prince; that was 
to disobey her husband on two of the dogmata, namely, to 
obey the Parliament and to uphold the Jesuits; and the third 
dogma, to hold by the Sullyites, was sliding from beneath 
her. Sully met the prince and attended him to the gates of 
the Louvre—when he returned to the Arsenal: and the 
queen was really terrified at the ominous union of Conde 
and Sully, with the materiel of the Arsenal and the forty 
millions in his hands. 

Sully was next summoned upon the matter of the expedi¬ 
tion to Cleves, when Conchini, Soissons, and Bouillon, let 
him talk on, as one to whom they scorned to betray their 
designs. After a few squabbles and quarrels at Court, 
Sully set off for his impregnable hold of Montrond on the 
Loire. “ I carefully concealed my design of not returning 
to Paris, and my resolution was confirmed by a violent 
illness—when I arrived there, only attributable to the 
trouble of my heart for the last four months. Here to calm 
my mind I composed two bits of poetry, a parallel between 
Caesar and Henri le Grand; the second, an Adieu to the 
Court.” 

Sully, departed from the Court, records, that Villeroi, 
Sillery, and Jeannin, seized with consternation and fear, 
were treated even as himself. The queen-mother then 
commanded his presence at the coronation, and to account 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


151 


for his employments. And he returned as commanded to 
see the order of things reversed. Sully now discovers—I 
must give it verbatim—he found “ a thousand schemes on 
foot to render the people miserable, instead of applying the 
treasures amassed by the late king to their relief, as in 
justice ought to have been done since the circumstances of 
affairs were so changed that the design for which they were 
raised could not be executed,” in short, Sully and Henri 
might amass, but none other save Henri and Sully. Queen 
Marie made one more effort to draw him from his retreat, 
when she gave him leave to resign, which he did, walking off 
with a donation of 300,000 livres, free from the fifth and the 
tenth penny, and duty to the Order of the Holy Ghost, from 
which his Majesty was desirous I should be exempted. So 
exeunt Sully and his household tribe; whilst Richelieu 
remarks :—“ ordinarily the fall of a great man is the fall of 
a 'party ; but the fall of this colossus was of himself alone.” 
For the Council, Jeannin, Sillery, and Villeroi, all ratted 
and joined with Conchini against the Colossus and his sons 
and brothers. His titles, estates, revenues, and cash, are 
unfathomable, he has recorded them in the 29th and 30th of 
his chapters ; we only comprehend that they were immense. 

Thus did Henri’s kingdom revert to its elements, they 
plundered the amassed treasures, and they quarrelled. Soissons 
left the Court, he would not consent that the Duchess of 
Yendome, the sacrificed Mile, de Mercceur, should wear the 
fleur de lis on her robes. Conde followed and rejoined his 
wife, refuged in Flanders with the Archduchess. The Duke 
of Epernon required the citadel of Metz, which the queen 
accorded. The Duke of Bouillon, Rohan, and Lesdigueres, 
ran off and revolted; only the Guises, ever good and true, 
remained faithful to the throne, and they stood beneath the 
ban of the dead king. Spain meantime was expelling the 
Moors; the emperor was assailing the duchy of Cleves; the 


152 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Jesuits were making themselves disagreeable; when the 
Huguenots again rebelled, starving for food and shouting— 

“ Le roi est a Paris et nous a Nismes.” 

The queen remembered her husband’s injunctions, and in¬ 
creased the Parisian church establishments as the remedy. 

1614. Vendome, young scoundrel, rebelled against his 
brother ; and we have a perfect parallel of the Valois reign. 
The queen was accused of striving to poison her son, She 
also wished to depose the regency, and cited the case of 
Queen Catherine and Charles IX. as an authority. She was 
instructed that all France was siding with Conde, save Guise 
and save Epernon, who was checked in his fortress of Metz 
by Lorraine; and the Huguenots arose, averring that the 
minority of the king was their, then-or-never, opportunity. 

Then the Prince of Conde issued his defiance, 21st Feb¬ 
ruary, 1614, proclaiming that he intended to reform the 
disorders of the State, though he did not intend to ruin 
the king; but it was thought he reached at the crown, as 
his grandsire Louis, who had been called King Louis XIII. 
He complained of— 

Church unhonoured. 

Lack of foreign embassies. 

Divisions in the Sorbonne. 

Noblesse impoverished. 

People overtaxed. 

Law too expensive. 

Parliament not free. 

Ministers reckless. 

Prodigality in royal revenues. 

Royal marriages to be postponed until an assembly of 
the State convoked. 

And such like general charges, with the usual results; the 
rebels were bought off: two had died—the Count of Soissons 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


153 


and the Constable Montmorenci: but Conde, Du Maine, De 
Nevers, Longueville, Rohan, Yendome, and Bouillon, all 
were bought off by governments or cash, despite the efforts 
of Guise and his party. The ban of the dead king was upon 
him, the only faithful one, and the treaty of St. Menehould, 
15th May, 1614, was effected; after which Louis XIII. was 
declared Majeur , and the cycle of the revolution of 1563 was 
again revolved in 1614 under the two queen-mothers. 

We must not be lured away from the era under our dis¬ 
cussion into this sequent era of Louis XIII. and Richelieu ; 
but thus far it is requisite to the history to show how wrong 
—radically wrong—were the injunctions and governments 
of Henri IY. and Sully. The race* of hatards only added 
to the chaos and confusion left behind. The wreck of 
Queen Marie de Medici was fuller, personally, than that 
of Queen Catherine; but it was only that a hand capable 
of ruling a realm arose—that of Richelieu—which, as a 
necessary consequence, threw her from her seat, and she 
died in exile, 

The story of “ La mere et le fils ” demands a volume 
of its own. Solely let me say that 1616 saw the whole 
Huguenot force again on foot, another Conde again im¬ 
prisoned in the Louvre, and another peace—the peace of 
Loudon —granted by the king; on which away went all to 
their fortresses:— 

Yendome to Le Fere; 

Longueville to Peronne ; 

Cceuvres (a d’Estree) to Laon; 

Bouillon to Sedan; 

and the head-quarters of these malcontents was Soissons. 
The queen then entreated Guise to aid her. 

Sully demanded an audience on matter of life and death : 
the king, queen, Mangot, and Barbin received him. He 
made a long discourse against the princes and their designs. 


154 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


He was asked what remedies he proposed ? He answered 
that troubles were impending. He then left the cabinet, 
but, returning, thrust in one leg and half his body, and cried 
out, “ Sire and madame! I entreat your majesties to think 
of what I have said, I have discharged my conscience. 
Would to God you were in the midst of twelve hundred 
horse. I see no other remedy.” The queen wept. The 
Conchinis wished to depart to Italy; but Eleanor fainted, 
and was unable to be moved, which brought on their dire 
tragedy. The man now wanting was the murdered Biron— 
Biron, with his forty-two wounds. Guise was irresolute: 
the fate of his fathers daunted him. He was faithful, but 
unequal to his father in resolution and action. Led by 
Biron, they would have conquered all. The wittol king 
had murdered his true friend, and trusted to the rotten- 
hearted sycophant tribe. The purchased peace of Loudon 
(Sept. 1616) cost a countless sum: twenty millions in cash, 
besides pay, places, and governments. 

On 24th of April, 1617, Conchini (the Marechal d’Ancre, 
his title in France) was shot in the Louvre by command of 
the king, and his place was filled by Luynes, the favourite, 
who reigned a short time and gave place to Richelieu, who 
raised France to a kingdom, reducing all to obedience. 

Leonora Conchini, the foster-sister of the queen, who had 
accompanied her from Italy and never left her, was seized 
and taken to the Bastille, where she was condemned to death 
as a Jewess and sorceress, one who worked nativities and 
practised iriagic. She smiled ineffable scorn on her per¬ 
secutors, and died on the scaffold with equal modesty and 
resolution, ending a life of exile, sorrow, and trouble with a 
bloody death. So fell the foster-sister of Queen Marie. 

Richelieu has recorded this testimony of himself. It was 
in 1625, prior to the last siege of Rochelle, that he addressed 
the king and queen-mother thus:—“ When your majesties 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


155 


resolved to take me into your service and counsel for the 
direction of affairs, I can say, with truth, that the Huguenots 
divided the State with your majesties; that the nobles con¬ 
ducted themselves as though they had not been subjects; 
and that the strongest governors of provinces, in their duties, 
as if they had been kings.” 

The town of Rochelle fell to Richelieu in 1628. Her 
fall was provoked by the seizure of a royal fleet, equipped 
against the Turks, under the Duke of Nevers, by her free¬ 
booters, and after the vain attempt of England, under the 
Duke of Buckingham, to relieve it. The then president, 
Herault records the fall thus:—“So fell this rebel city. 
For 200 years it had armed against its lords, and ever chose 
a day of their embarrassment to revolt. They did so under 
Louis XI., whilst he fought with his brother, the Duke 
of Guienne; against Charles VIII., when all Italy assailed 
him; against Louis XII., w'hen he fought with the Milan¬ 
ese ; against Francis II. and Charles IX. in their minori¬ 
ties; against Henri III., arming against his rebel brother, 
Anjou; against Henri IV., combating with Savoy; against 
Louis XIII., against whom she fought thrice, the last war 
costing him forty millions.” To which testimony we may add 
their blasphemous orgies and their ribald press. Buchanan 
and De Beze, birds of a feather in an age infamous for 
libels. So l’Etoile, under the head of Bochelle , writes that 
M. de Plomb, mon bon ami, wrote a pamphlet, £ Le Soldat 
Francois/ and asked him “ if the pens of the Huguenots had 
lost their sharpness or vehemence?” I replied, “Not a 
whit.” The king (Henri IV.) read it and laughed at it. 
Even King Antoine had rebuked De Beze for the satires of 
the Huguenots of Rochelle. There is little doubt Buchanan 
and De Beze worked together, and conjoined the libellers of 
Edinburgh Castle and Rochelle together. Buchanan had 
been tutor to De Brissac, after Mary, Queen of Scots. 


156 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


They were no strangers; whilst the story handed down 
of De Beze shows that he was no stranger to the bounty 
of Queen Elizabeth, who, at eighty-five years of age, with 
no diminution of mind or memory for theology and letters, 
never could be made to understand that Queen Elizabeth 
was dead, and ever inquired “how was the Queen of Eng¬ 
land ” to 1605, when he expired in his eighty-seventh year. 

L’Etoile’s aspirations at that time were to eradicate the 
two bastard plants, “ Papistes et Huguenotsto make 
the Catholic reformed, and the reformed Catholic. 

The Huguenots, driven from Rochelle, became camisards, 
and made their wolf’s den in the Cevennes Mountains; and 
when Louis XIY. was hardest pressed, in 1704, he was 
obliged to detach an ai;my corps against them and their then 
rebel chief, Jean Cavalier. Marshal Villars put them down, 
and Cavalier refuged in England and died in Chelsea. 

In 1792, the men of Cevennes hoisted the white flag and 
fleur de lis and joined the Yendeens. The Convention de¬ 
creed their extermination, appointing a date, the end of 
October, which was duly done by Westerman and the pay- 
san— the creation of MM. Chatrain, who records that “les 
refractaires furent fusilles, until, malheureusement, Wester¬ 
man, huissieurs et nous aussi ” were so wearied with slaugh¬ 
tering that a remnant crossed the Loire and escaped to the 
bocages. Again, in 1821, did this irrepressible unhappy 
town conjoin with Pau and the Carbonari, and rebel under 
Lafayette’s instigation, when four of the leaders were exe¬ 
cuted at Paris. Sins of the fathers on the children. 

Amongst the exaggerations to be weeded forth from his¬ 
tory is that of refugees and emigrants from Rochelle to 
England, on account of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
No hands were ever heavier against that town than were 
those of Henri IY. and Sully, when they decreed that edict, 
checking it with Jesuits and Parisian Roman Catholics; 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


157 


none was easier upon it than Louis XIV., when he revoked 
the edict and withdrew protection to the Jesuits, and re¬ 
voked the cruel laws against sorcery and witchcraft simul¬ 
taneously. Queen Elizabeth, the godly regent James, Earl 
of Moray, and Sully, with De Thou and the French courts 
of judicature, pushed the laws of sorcery to extreme cruelty 
and brutality. Great names—such as Sir William Stewart, 
Lion King-at-Arms, and Eleanor Conchini, foster-sister to 
Queen Marie de Medici—were tyrannously murdered on 
that ridiculous plea, which was put forward when no other 
plea was available to murder and spoil a Jew or an Italian. 

I proceed in this recording task with Queen Marguerite. 
We have read her adventure at four o’clock in the morning 
of the St. Bartholomew. Another adventure will cast light 
on those times. Queen Marguerite possessed a carriage 
in 1574, and she relates as follows:—“One day, the queen- 
mother, having retired to her room to write to Madame de 
Nevers, Miles, de Rais, Bourdeille, and de Surgeres pro¬ 
posed a £ promenade a la ville.’ Another, the niece of 
Madame d’Uzey, proposed that they should visit the Abbaye 
St. Pierre, where the services were good, and where she had 
an aunt, and could obtain admission which was not accorded 
to all the world. Away we all went en chariot , seven in¬ 
sides, whilst Liancourt and Camilles, the esquires, jumped 
up, and held on to the portieres how they might. We were 
in holiday spirits, and they vowed that they too would see 
les belles religieuses. Thank goodness that they did so! for 
their presence aided to get me out of a calumny that fol¬ 
lowed. We went to the service, and my chariot, which was 
gilded, and of yellow velvet and silver, waited on the place, 
around which many noblemen were lodged. 

« Whilst we were at St. Pierre, the king, with the king 
my husband, D’O., and the gros Ruffe, were visiting Quelus, 
who was ill, passed by, and saw my carriage empty. ‘ Why 


158 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


here is your wife’s carriage, and there is the lodging of 
Bide,’ who was ill, said the king; ‘ I will wager now that 
she is there.’ Gros Ruffe was sent to see, and returned to 
say ‘ the birds were there, but have flown.’ ” 

Away King Charles posted to the queen-mother, but, as 
Marguerite says, her husband would not lend himself to such 
malice. He met her on her return, and said to her, “ ‘ Off, 
and away to the queen-mother. I can only say you will find 
her in anger.’ I asked, “Why?’ ‘Well, I cannot tell 
you,—know nothing about it; it is only an invention to 
make me and you quarrel, and so separate me from your 
brother’s friendship.’ I next met M. de Guise, who fore¬ 
warned me not to be troubled about the divisions in our 
house (he thought to pick up bits of its wreck). ‘ I waited 
here to tell you that the queen vous a preste une dangereuse 
charite ;’ and he told me what D’O had commissioned him 
to tell me. Next I ran against the Duchess of Nemours, 
who addressed me with, ‘ Mon Dieu! madame; your mother 
is in a rage with you. I advise you to keep out of her way.’ 
‘ I shall do no such thing,’ I replied.” And then she met 
her mother’s wrath (she was then twenty-tw r o years old), 
w r hich all cleared off and away when the truth was told and 
known through the esquires, and the malice of King Charles 
was manifested. She had next an affectionate meeting with 
Henri, her husband, and bitterly complained of the public 
affront put upon her. “ Well, thank God, it failed,” said 
Henri. “Yes, thank God and your bon naturel” she re¬ 
plied, “ these are artifices to divide us.” 

Nothing tells more strongly against the Valois brothers 
than this tampering with their young sister’s fame for 
their own quarrelsome ends. At the age of fifteen, in the 
nursery, we saw Henri, her brother, threaten to have her 
whipped for being in love with Guise. We have now this 
anecdote, involving her w r ith another in 1574; whilst in 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


159 


after life Henri, lier brother, accused her to her husband 
as favouring Turenne. Her fame, happily, stands on the 
firmest basis, praised by all the great and good, and honoured 
and beloved to her death. 

Charles Lamb, in his c Essays of Elia,’ causes a maiden 
to reply to her lover, “ that she could endure some high- 
flown compliments; that a young woman placed in her 
position had a right to expect civil sayings to her; that she 
hoped she could d'gest a dose of adulation, short of insin¬ 
cerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young 
women.” This imaginary case, put by the essayist, is the 
story of the position of Queen Marguerite, and what she had 
to endure from the age of fifteen to the grave. She herself 
remarks upon it in a most matter-of-fact way; that the 
assiduities she had to endure were only those of every 
damsel of any rank and pretension, and they were part of 
the burden princesses have to bear. We learn that Guise, 
Mole, and Bussey d'Amboise bore her colours in the jousts; 
and we have the story of Pibrac, her chancellor at Usson, 
who thought his post entitled him to do the like. Queen 
Marguerite addressed her chancellor by letter, and rebuked 
him for presumption, that his position gave him no such 
warrant. When De Thou visited Usson, Pibrac, who was 
his friend, laid the case before him; but De Thou was con¬ 
vinced that the queen had done right, and that it was the 
chancellor who had overweened. Here we have evidently 
a simple question of a point of position or post of honour, 
which commentators perplex with personal feelings and acts 
of impropriety. Pibrac, very probably considered that a 
chancellor was a chancellor, and Usson equal to the Louvre. 
De Thou thought otherwise. If the fair fame of Queen 
Marguerite had not been assailed to excuse her husband’s 
vices, it would not have been necessary to have adduced the 
proofs to the contrary. I adduce King Henry IV., Sully, 


160 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


De Fontenay, and Richelieu. She was the only woman 
whom Henri IV. treated with undeviating respect. With 
Gabrielle and Henriette he needed his roughness to restrain 
their rebellious spirits; added to which their fidelity was 
a subject to be winked upon, and which we may leave to 
Sully’s memoirs. He was wont to taunt women, and Marie 
de Medici smote him on the mouth, and sent him forth to 
complain to Sully. So did he never do to Queen Mar¬ 
guerite, whilst her assailants are the ribalds who assailed all 
that which was fair and good. 

Sully writes:—“Nothing would have been wanting to 
complete the unhappiness of these domestic quarrels, if 
Queen Margaret had borne a part of them. This was the 
only misfortune that Henri escaped; and certainly this 
princess merited the highest encomiums for the sweetness 
of her temper, her resignation, and, above all, her disin¬ 
terestedness, in a situation which enabled her to urge her 
wishes. Her demands were few, of things not only neces¬ 
sary—but such as to which she had an incontestable right— 
fulfilling her engagements, and with exemptions for her 
borough of Usson. During her whole life she maintained 
the same rectitude of conduct that her behaviour never be¬ 
trayed she was the wife of the king. I should not confine 
my praise to what I have already said of her, were I not 
apprehensive of being accused of partiality, since the interest 
which this princess has always had the goodness to take in 
my behalf is well known. Her letters to me were such as 
we write to a sincere friend; and in one she expresses her¬ 
self, ‘ You are always my resource, and, after God, my surest 
reliance.’ ” 

When Henri and Sully resolved, for the state policy of 
securing a future Louis XIII., to contract new nuptials to that 
end—and their conversations thereupon in 1598 are a caution 
—Sully interpolates, “ Neither the king nor I had attended 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


161 


to a circumstance absolutely necessary—Marguerite's consent 
to the dissolution of her marriagea duty he forthwith 
undertook. 

Accordingly, to sound her intentions, he wrote a letter, of 
which this is the substance: that France desired a lawful 
heir to the crown; and that a reconciliation might be effected 
with Henri; and that the necessity of giving legitimate 
children to France would reconcile her to the sacrifice which 
I took the liberty of placing before her as that which the 
State expected from her. She took time to deliberate. Five 
months after she wrote, dated from Usson, such an answer 
as we desired —prudent, modest, and submissive. “ From 
which period no one laboured more loyally than did Queen 
Marguerite in her own determined way. Of Gabrielle or 
d’Entragues, as the queen to supersede herself, she would 
not hear; but for Marie de Medici, or any other worthy 
alliance, she would lend every aid. She was the mistress 
of the situation; no breath of slander is uttered on her 
fame. On the contrary, Sully and Henri cannot sufficiently 
respect her. She resided in Paris to her death, where her 
residence was the resort of men of letters. She spoke better 
than any other woman of her time, and wrote more correctly 
than her sex was then capable of doing.” So far for Sully. 
Now for the eulogium of Richelieu, under the date 27th 
March, 1615. 

“ 27th March (1615), three days after the king had dis¬ 
missed the deputies of the Estates, Queen Marguerite passed 
from this life into the other. She was herself the greatest 
princess of her time, daughter, sister, wife of great kings ; 
notwithstanding the halo, the plaything of fortune; over¬ 
looked by the people who owed her fealty, and another 
holding the seat due to herself. Daughter of Henry II. 
and Catherine de Medicis, she was, for State policy, married 
to the late king (Navarre), whom, for his pretence of 

M 


162 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


being of the false faith, she did not love. Her espousals, 
which appeared to hear a public rejoicing and to reunite 
the two parties dividing the realm, was the occasion of a 
general grief and renewal of war deadlier than ever. The 
fete was followed by St. Bartholomew; the cries and groans 
resounded through Europe; the wine of the feast mingled 
with the blood, and the meats with the bodies, of murdered 
innocents, pele mele with the guilty. The solemnity was 
only acceptable to the House of Guise, who immolated 
his victim to his vengeance and glory under colour of 
piety, whom he had no hope to conquer by arms. If these 
nuptials were fatal to France, they were not less so to 
herself. She saw her husband in danger, nor knew whether 
to save him or to let him perish. If he returned to his own 
quarters, he became the enemy of the king, her brother ; 
she saw not which side to follow: respect for her husband, 
or respect for her king and her religion. Love carried the 
question: she followed the promptings of her heart and 
duty. The war was intermittent, as a fever is; and it is 
certain that, on such sad occurrences, libels, suspicions, 
false reports current at courts, and some accidents she 
herself contributed, severed their hearts as necessity se¬ 
parated themselves. Meantime the three brothers died in 
the miseries of these civil wars. Her husband succeeded 
to the crown, but as she possessed not his love, so he did 
not share with her his grandeur. The State reason to 
possess progeny easily won him to another marriage. She 
—not so touched to fall from the height of the throne to 
be the Duchess of Valois—as she was ardent and full of the 
desire of the good of the State and happiness of her husband, 
offered no resistance to that which he desired, being, as she 
said, willingly submissive to one who had conquered for¬ 
tune ; and, instead of femininely burning with hate and 
envy against those who held the place which belonged to 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 163 

her, she, on the contrary, made donation of all her wealth 
to the dauphin whom God had granted to the queen, came 
to court, lodged vis a vis Le Louvre, and not only visited 
the queen, but paid, during the rest of her life, all the 
honours and assiduities due to the youngest princess. The 
lowliness of her position was so heightened by her goodness 
and virtues that she fell in no contempt. True inheritrix 
of the House of Valois, she made no gifts but with excuse 
they were not greater, expressed the wish that her means 
equalled her will. Her house was the refuge of men of 
letters: she loved their conversation. Her table.was open 
to them, and she profited by their discourse. She spoke 
better than any female of her time; she wrote more elo¬ 
quently than was ordinary at that time; and, as charity is 
the queen of virtues, so this great queen crowned hers by 
charity; so God recompensed with usury her pity which 
she bestowed on man by granting her so Christian-like an 
end; so that though she had reason to envy the life of 
others, she had no need to envy their death.” 

The editor of Sully’s memoirs writes in his note re¬ 
specting these encomiums, “Surely this is sufficient to 
compensate for a small number of levities and human weak¬ 
nesses, which are the utmost with which this princess could 
ever be chargedand Marguerite herself would add, of the 
fadaises which, as princess, she had to endure ; for, truly, it 
was owing to her courtesy as princess that she was accused 
of levity as a woman. There is no golden mean to put 
calumny to silence. 

Fontenay - Mareuil records as follows : — “ Queen Mar¬ 
guerite died at the close of March, closing the branch of 
Valois. God had accorded to her great endowments. She 
was surpassed by none by birth, nor by beauty, nor by 
greatness of soul; but, not having used all such gifts as 
she ought to have done, she repaired all her past faults by 


164 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


consenting to the divorce of Henry the Grand, so that he 
might marry and have an heir, which had failed in her. 
She left M. le Dauphin, by a deed of gift, all her imperial 
rights, which were widely spread, as the heiress of Henri III. 
She left memoirs of a part of her life, which gained great 
approbation ” (p. 267). 

To follow the eulogium of Brantome is to out-Herod 
Herod: with him Marguerite is the superlative of worth 
and beauty. We may epitomise it in the anagram pre¬ 
served and recorded by him:— 

“ Salve Yirgo mater Dei,” 

Marguerite de Valois. 

The origin of the imprisonment of Queen Marguerite 
in Usson was having aided Anjou to escape from captivity. 
Whilst she was absent and in honourable ward, her hus¬ 
band’s affections, never fixed on any one, flew away to his 
mistresses. She returned to Paris under the reign of Marie 
de Medici, and her house was the rendezvous of men of 
worth and science, where she lived honoured and beloved. 
A story of the queen-mother having disinherited her is 
without foundation. Henri d’Angouleme, the batard, aided 
by Henri III., disputed her rights to the succession. He 
held the title deeds, and spoke of the queen-mother’s will 
in his favour; but no will was ever forthcoming,' and the 
Court decided in her favour by default of the other side to 
prove anything. She left all her possessions by will to the 
dauphin; the calumny of the queen-mother disinheriting 
her is without foundation. 

In the opening chapter I conjoined the name of Mary 
Queen of Scots with her fellow-queens. In the treatise on 
her life I presumed that she had suffered wrong on the part 
of the Guises and of the queen-mother, who failed to lend 
her aid at need. It is very evident that persons who are 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


165 


themselves overpowered by adverse circumstances are in no 
case to lend aid to another. The years 1566 and 1567—in 
which Queen Mary fell, by the will of God, and the Roman 
Catholic religion was put down by the heavy hand of the 
rising Protestants—were those years in which the Hugue¬ 
nots were triumphant in France, the Lutherans in Flanders, 
and the Calvinists were strong upon the banks of the Rhine. 
France, Italy, and Spain were then at their hardest trial. 
Taken unawares, they fought with varying fortune ; for, 
whilst the Huguenots were eventually put down in France, 
yet the Spaniards succumbed to the Lutherans of the 
Netherlands. Queen Elizabeth sat safe on her isle in the 
seas, and with a niggard hand lent aid to the rebels of 
Ghent, Rochelle, and of Scotland; or bolstered France and 
Spain and Scotland against their rebels, striking the props 
from beneath each in turn as she deemed she saw the 
balance sway in their favour. It was she, truly, who adopted 
the motto, “ divide and rule,” which historians have attri¬ 
buted to the queen-mother, who never ruled, nor had power 
given her to divide. Elizabeth, like a pawnbroker, lent 
money, and laid hands on the jewels of Scotland, Navarre, 
and Burgundy, aud refused to refund them. She accepted 
Havre from the French rebels, and starved her own garrison 
therein. She did the like in Flanders, until Leicester was 
ejected thence. She caracolled at Tilbury, when the Armada 
had been driven in by storm and wreck; when, like to the 
king in ‘ The Critic/ where Sheridan has caricatured the 
epoch, she exclaims— 

“ Go, tell the treasurer not to disburse five farthings; 

And bid the schoolmaster whip all the little boys.” 

At the date of the great need of Mary Queen of Scots, 1567, 
the regent Marguerite was a prisoner to the Lutherans at 
Brussels ; and the queen^nother fled to the refuge of Paris 


166 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


from the victorious Conde at Meaux. Whilst the Guises 
were proscribed by the envy and jealousy of Charles IX., 
and possessed no power in the State, Philip of Spain had 
his hands full of the Inquisition; and Rome had not re¬ 
covered the sack of 1527, and possessed only spiritual blatant 
power. 

There was no wrong done to Queen Mary by her co¬ 
religionists and kindred. All were tossed in the same 
storm, and were powerless to lend her aid. Queen Mary’s 
fate was brought about by herself and the generous feminine 
feelings which could not endure to behold the fall of the 
Hamiltons at Falkirk. The loss of a hundred of those 
gallant souls did not wreck her cause; but, with the unrea¬ 
soning resolution of the feminine mind, she cast herself on 
Queen Elizabeth for aid and met her ruin ; otherwise there 
was no necessity for that step—the material loss at Falkirk 
was but small. Time has reduced the charges against her 
to two: — 1st. A collusive marriage with Both well; and 
2nd. Being accessory to the Babington conspiracy. There 
is really no crime in either; but she is utterly free from 
both. They depend on two disgraceful forgeries and plots, 
which may be called the Silver Casket and Beer-barrel 
Plots. In the silver casket was hidden and found the 
famous love-letter to Both well; in the beer-barrel was 
hidden and found the letter to Babington. Both of inordi¬ 
nate length and of pedantic style and matter; both utterly 
unlike the pure and easy flow of Queen Mary’s letters, of 
which we possess seven volumes. They are, in fact, two 
gross and palpable plots. The first was written in Edin¬ 
burgh Castle, and the latter was written by Phillips in 
cypher at Chartley. It took him a fortnight to concoct; but 
there are seven letters, filling fifty folio pages, all bearing 
date the same day, 17th July, 1586, and purporting to be 
written in a rush of hurry. A jury would at once decide 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


167 


that they were forgeries, of which there is no reasonable 
doubt. As she herself wrote to Mauvissiere, “ Find out for 
me who one Phillips is, who is down here, I fear, with 
no good intentions towards me.” Queen Mary consistently 
denied any knowledge or participation in these silver casket 
and beer-barrel captured letters, and demanded to see “ her 
own handwrit,” which her persecutors were too wary to 
show. Baser or more palpable plots were never laid, and 
have only succeeded with the party, who have fought a 
party fight and have need to bolster an untenable cause by 
forgeries and despotism. 

One more, and I have finished: Catherine of Lorraine, 
the Amazon, who vowed to revenge her brothers’ murders, 
and who avowed her joy at the murder of Henry III. She 
was given to the old Duke of Montpensier, and never married 
another, dying herself at the age of forty-five. L’Etoile 
records, in 1594, that Catherine (Montpensier), being in the 
room with Catherine of Bourbon (Madame), there was a 
gentleman, to whom the Sieur de Grillon whispered a few 
words, who went to the dame of Montpensier, and said, 
“ Madame, you have no notion of what M. de Grillon said 
to me just now in a whisper. He said that it was you who 
killed the late king, and that I ought to kill you.” She 
replied, “ I was not strong enough to do that; but to say 
that I did not rejoice at it, I confess it aloud. I avow it in 
society,” All heard her astounded; but marvelled more that, 
with such daring, none was more welcome than she, both 
with the king and Madame, more so than any other lady of 
her rank.” 

We find another entry, 25th September, 1594, by l’Etoile. 
The king was playing tete a tete cm sens with Madame de 
Montpensier, when the same Seigneur de Grillon said twice 
to the king, “Sire, gardez le petit couteau de la Mont¬ 
pensier ! ** 


168 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Catherine of Lorraine, and her mother the Duchess of 
Nemours, were the souls of the Parisians during the siege 
by Henri IY. When the city fell, she expected and was 
prepared to meet instant death. On the contrary, Henri 
visited her, and they had an interchange of wit and repartee. 
“ Sire,” said the lady, “ I now regret that my brother May- 
enne did not let fall the bridge for your entry.” “ Ventre 
St. Gris! ” replied the king; “ then he would have made 
me wait long enough. Nay, I was too early in the morning 
for him.” Mayenne was stout and indolent, and the king’s 
repartee was equivalent to the Scotch martial air, “Are 
ye waking, Johnny Cope? ” 


CHAPTER VI. 

The law of marriage appears to have been a very Nemesis 
upon the Salique law in France. The Salique law excluding 
daughters and grandsons through the daughter, appears to 
have been a pregnant cause of much of the misery of France. 
The insisted droit de naissance of Henri IY. is contradicted 
by its double plea the droit de conquete. The Guises had 
many a right which might have been successfully opposed 
to that of the Bourbons ; and, save for the Salique law, had 
the grandchildren of Henri II., the children of Isabel and of 
Claude before them. As if in mockery of the regal female 
inability to succeed, the provinces were eternally falling into 
the gift of the Crown through heiresses. 

Nothing strikes one more strongly than the small amount 
of power which resided in the Crown; the king had power 
over the person of a conquered feudal vassal, but none over 
his lands. Our old law of gavelkind existed in France, 
“ Sire to the bough, son to the plough,” signifying that 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


169 


escheat of lands did not follow conviction of treason, but 
that the person guilty of high treason suffered in his person, 
only. The Parliament at Paris had to be appealed to in 
the matter of inheritance, and does not appear to have 
favoured the Crown. Louis XI. seized on the lands of the 
Constable St. Pol, and annexed his territories. Henri IY. 
did the like in the case of Biron; but these were exceptions. 
Brittany was annexed by the duplicated marriage of two 
kings, so resolved were they that the inheritance should not 
flit away. The inheritance of Rene fell to Louis XI. by 
right of might—a division of his extensive counties and 
those of Charles the Bold being quietly divided between 
Maximilian and Louis. Navarre and Normandy fell in with 
Henri IV., whilst La Vendee and Gascony were not fully 
annexed until Richelieu conquered them. The mode in 
which infants in arms, and girls of tenderest age were 
bartered in matrimony, is cruel to contemplate. With the 
marriage the enjoyment of the revenues fell to the guardian 
of the infants. Sometimes an appeal was made to Parlia¬ 
ment to make the guardian resign his trust; when the bride 
died, her property conveyed by marriage, the person was of 
small account. 

The Chancellor Cheverny—brother-in-law to De Thou— 
had a daughter Marguerite, born 21st August, 1574, affianced 
to the Marquis of Nesle, 16th June, 1583, and married in 
1585, i. e., at eleven years of age. At ten years old she had 
succeeded her deceased mother as dame of honour to Henri 
III. and Queen Louise. The Marquis of Nesle fell with 
fifteen wounds at Ivry, leaving Marguerite childless fifteen 
years and eight months of age. She entered on her dowry, 
notwithstanding, and assumed the title of Madame de Maille. 
In 1593 she married M. de Givry, who was killed in 1594 
at the siege of Laon: she was not then twenty years old. 
She married a third time, and died herself at the age of 


170 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


only forty. The reason of these juvenile marriages is con¬ 
fessed by Cheverny’s son, who married his infant sons to 
infant heiresses, which gave him the power as guardian 
to administer their estates during the minorities. 

Another very graphic tale of matrimony is that of Tu- 
renne to the heiress Charlotte de la Marck, Mademoiselle 
de Bouillon, assigned to him by Henri IV., and who brought 
as dower the ever-coveted town of Sedan. He celebrated his 
nuptial day by capturing the neighbouring town of Stenay. 
We need not marvel to hear that the life of the bride was 
short. She died soon under such a rough regime, and 
Turenne inherited title and territory. 

But the breach of the marriage vow, or sacrament, was 
visited upon the commonalty with the punishment of death, 
as enjoined in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy; in common 
with those of sorcery, witchcraft, and abominations which 
are evidently used as instruments of persecution and private 
revenge. We find under 17th January, 1600, the following 
entry given as a specimen: “ To-day the king accorded to 
the Duke of Savoy the life of a woman taken with a servant 
of his. The man was already hung; the woman had been 
reprieved, being with child. The king having heard the 
remonstrances of his Council, who feared the consequences 
of this grace to gratify the duke, commuted the sentence 
from natural death to civil death—perpetual imprisonment 
in which she should be supported by her husband. In 
another case the king feared, by remission of the sentence, 
he was giving a license to crime. 

The next instance is that of a judge, the President Mol6, 
18th August, 1604. A man of Rennes, condemned by 
sentence of the court to espouse a widow to whom he had 
promised marriage, and by whom he had a child: the 
sentence ran that he should wed her before 12 o’clock that 
day or be beheaded. They rushed to the Church of St. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


171 


Bartholomew by 11 o’clock. The President Mole had pro¬ 
nounced the sentence, “ Ou epousez ou mourir; telle est la 
volonte et resolution de la cour.” 

In another cause adjudged by M. Mole the case is strange. 
One Yicquemare had been affianced by parole, and was 
adjudged on suit to fulfil the contract or to be beheaded. 
He chose rather to be beheaded, and was committed to the 
conciergerie for that purpose, and many persuasions and 
entreaties he endured from his friends ere he would agree 
to wed and save his life. He wedded the poor victim, who 
cast herself at his feet and besought his commiseration. 
“ Madame, ask pardon of God, and not of me,” was his 
rejoinder, and he sent her to his house to sleep and rank 
with the servants. “Behold,” adds L’Etoile, “a piteous 
unfortunate, miserable marriage—miserable on both sides.” 

De Thou, in a cause of one Miramion, pleaded 2nd 
August, 1607, who was defunct, and had given a promise 
of marriage to an Orleanese girl and had left issue by her. 
The king, understanding that the suit was going against the 
marquisate (the estate) in favour of the girl, warned the 
judges that the maxims which ruled the city did not rule 
the Court: but, in spite of the king, De Thou gave judg¬ 
ment in favour of the girl, although, doubtless, she did not 
benefit by it. 

This instance reverses the case of Queen Catherine, who 
prosecuted Nemours for breach of promise with Mademoiselle 
de Rohan, when the lawyers gave sentence in favour of 
Nemours against the queen as related in p. 101. 

The cases, which are numerous, may be summed up in a 
passage of Bishop Perefixe to his royal pupil Louis XIY. 
which he adduced as “an action of great justice and Chris¬ 
tian humility.” It refers to young Henri IY., and preceded 
the battle of Coutras, and runs thus: That young Henri, 
having abused the daughter of an officer of Rochelle, dis- 


172 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


honouring her family, &c., a minister, as the squadrons were 
on the point to charge, and who was there to offer prayer, 
took the liberty to point out to him that God could not 
favour his arms if he did not first ask pardon for his offence, 
and repair the scandal by a public satisfaction, and restore 
honour to the family he had wronged. The good king 
humbly heard the remonstrances, fell on his knees, and 
asked pardon of God for his fault, and prayed those who 
were present to be witnesses of this repentance, and to 
assure the father of the daughter that he would repair to the 
utmost in his power, if God granted him life, the dishonour 
he had done him. A submission so christianlike drew tears 
from the beholders, of whom there was not one who would 
not have given a thousand lives for a prince w r ho agreed so 
cordially to regard his inferiors (a faire raison a ses infe- 
rieurs). Does not such a sentiment in the mouth of a 
bishop to his pupil justify the Rebellion of 1789 ? 

. Henri himself, or the Sieur d’Estrees, insisted on the 
marriage of Gabrielle before she left his house; therefore 
she wedded Liancourt. Unto Henriette he gave a promise 
of marriage. Madame de Beuil was wedded in the morning 
to one Chanvelon, who was couched in an apartment over 
the king and his mistress, so that he was “dessus sa femme.” 
Des Essarts was unmarried. Corisande was the wife of De 
Grammont, and the two abbesses were spouses of God; to 
refer any system from such a jumble is impossible: whilst 
he feared, in numerous instances of infidelity, that to grant 
life was to give a license to crime, his own actions range 
through all possible positions. 

When Bussy d’Amboise was slain in midnight adventure, 
he appears to have died like a dog, cast out and buried, and 
no question made of the slayers—such was the code legal, 
honourable, and regal on the broken sacrament of marriage. 
The next injunction of Leviticus xviii., could only have been 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


173 


a plea for the accursed cruelty, and private malice and 
revenge which we find inherent to the lower orders of Paris. 

1. A man and an ass and two children were produced as 
father, mother, and offspring: the man was hanged, the she 
ass assommee a la potence, and the two children led off until 
it should be determined what should be their lot. 

2. A she goat produced a monstrous birth: it was attributed 
to a goat-herd, who was assomme with the goat, and the 
monster was burned. 

3. A calf was produced, and sworn to have been the 
offspring of a woman, who was assommee—killed by clubs. 

Here we see private greed and malice finding vent in these 
cruelties. Some bit of property or possession was the thing 
gained by the murder. 

The crime of sorcery opens a wider field, and of deeper 
dye, from the simple entries of executions. 

“ Burnt at the Place de Greve, a woman known long time 
as a sorceress. 13th August, 1604.” 

“ Prayers by command of the king and queen for la Cousine 
(daughter of the queen’s nurse) said to be ensorcellee.” 
5th Nov., 1604. 

Dominique Mimaille, Italien, 70 years old, a burgess of 
Etampes, with his mother-in-law, were hanged and burnt 
before Notre Dame, after having made amende honorable for 
magic and sorcery. L’Etoile remarking that such an execution 
was a novelty in Paris, where such vermin have had free 
scope, especially at Court, and were called philosophers and 
astrologers. He says, “ in the reign of Charles IX. they 
numbered thirty thousand, as their chief averred in 1572.” 

It was quite enough to be an Italian, and to possess any 
property, to ensure persecution, as the first step to confiscation: 
they held a similar position to the Jews, in many ages and 
realms, objects for extortion. Yet, where we find a recorded 
case of sorcery and magic, it is generally the Reformed 


174 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


religionists who are the prosecutors and the extortioners; 
the Catholics, being richer, were not so famished and inor¬ 
dinate in plundering. De Thou was at Chinon, curiously, in 
the very house where Rabelais dwelt. After dilating upon 
his works, l’Etoile adds :—“ But the following adventure 
merits more attention. The judges of Angouleme having 
condemned a man noble named Beaumont for magic, and 
summoned to Paris, he was stopped at Chinon by a dame of 
highest rank, but too curious in such matters. He resided 
two years with her in liberty, when fame ran that he had 
worked miracles. Giles of Souvre, Governor of Tours, then 
at Chinon, wished to examine in the matter. He obtained 
permission from the President de Thou; and as he pressed 
De Thou to interrogate, De Thou excused himself that he 
might be called away to Paris, and Calignon was commis¬ 
sioned, who was well fitted for the task. Calignon was well 
up in literature, philosophy, mathematics, and jurisprudence, 
and after the opening questions he interrogated him exactly 
on the principles of magic, on its effects, of its operations on 
those who dealt in it. Souvre and the President de Thou 
were hid in a recess of a window, silently listening. Calignon 
insinuated himself so well into the spirit of the criminal that 
he deemed himself to be freed, and taking confidence, he 
avowed much; which he afterwards denied when, against his 
hopes, he was put upon trial at Paris. 

This is what we collected the most surely from this inter¬ 
rogatory, or rather this conference. Beaumont averred that 
the magic he professed was the art to converse with genie 
who attend on those called sorcerers, who are slaves of the 
demon when ignorant, and which act to human evil by poison 
and charms; but in the hands of the wise do good, command 
the genii, know intimately their secret powers, unknown to 
the world, and unwritten. It teaches futurity how to escape 
perils, and to recover that which is lost, to flit from place to 


CATHEKINE DE MEDICI. 


175 


place, and to reconcile fathers and sons, husbands and wives, 
and generally all adversaries. He added that he conversed 
with celestial spirits, habitants of the air, good in their 
nature, and capable only to do good: that those of the centre 
of the earth, commanded by sorcerers, were evil spirits, and 
capable, only to do ill. That the world was full of sages 
filled with this sublime philosophy. That it existed in 
Spain, at Toledo, Cordova, Granada, and was once celebrated 
in Germany, until the heresy of Luther chased it thence. 
In France and England it resided traditionally in some noble 
families; but that they only admitted to their confidence 
chosen souls, lest the commerce of the profane, of the 
canaille, and indigent should ruin its mysteries. He con¬ 
tinued to discourse of the miracles he had done, to the 
advantage of those who consulted him, and that so com¬ 
posedly, that there appeared nought of impious or criminal, 
but truths acknowledged and well known. After the inter¬ 
rogation he was led away to the castle. De Thou kept him 
strictly, and Souvre was astounded at the stolidity of the 
malheureux. He was taken to Paris, and there condemned on 
these informations, and suffered the death worthy of his life.” 
(Petitot, vol. 37, p. 515.) 

This was duly related to Henri IV., with the addition that 
Como Ruggieri assailed his Majesty’s life by detestable 
magic. That, under pretext of painting as an artist, he had 
a room in the chateau where he had a figure in wax represent¬ 
ing the king, which every day he pierced, pronouncing 
barbarous words to make him die by inches. This was pre¬ 
sented to the king, signed by the accusers. The king 
appointed De Thou and C. Turcant to look into it. This 
Ruggieri was the same man who, 25 years before, had been 
put to the question, prior to the death of Charles IX. De 
Thou now put the question and conducted the enquiry. 


176 CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 

Ruggieri replied, that it was a calumny of his enemies; that 
he had been acquitted, and honourably dismissed ; that it 
was quite true he had a knowledge of astrology, and could 
well calculate a nativity; that he had truly predicted events 
to many, which had been the cause of the calumny accusing 
him of commerce with evil spirits — his dealings were 
natural; that his successes ought to argue his innocence, 
and his long love for the king was a proof how he must 
detest sorcery. He added that on the St. Bartholomew, the 
King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde being in the power 
of the king, the queen-mother asked for their nativities; that 
he told her that he had taken them exactly, and that, follow¬ 
ing all scientific principles, there was nothing to be feared 
from them ; that the affection he bore those princes, and no 
experience of his art, dictated that answer, since this thing 
was by its nature impenetrable to astrology; that he trusted 
the king had not forgotten that service, and persuaded that 
his Majesty would not suffer him to be further exposed to 
such calumnies. De Thou carried that answer to the king. 
Henri was walking up and down his room, and replied that 
he remembered the circumstance, which had been mentioned 
to him by La Noue; that he put his own trust in God, and 
feared nothing from charms, which had no power over those 
who trusted in Divine providence.' 

So Ruggieri escaped, to De Thou’s dissatisfaction, who 
avowed that he had won the women of the Court, and through 
them the king. This was the man supposed to have sold 
poisoned gloves to the Queen of Navarre, as related before. 
De Thou pursued him to his death, and he was denied 
Christian burial on the score of his astrology. 

And what was astrology : it is ludicrous to read and fitter 
for the pages of Rabelais or Sterne than for grave history : 
it is matter for “ laughter holding both his sides.” We will 



CATHERINE HE MEDICI. 


177 


go to the pious and Protestant House of Navarre for one 
instance, Queen Margaret, who talked with Calvin and copied 
the style of Erasmus, the mother of Queen Jeanne. 

“ Elle nasquit sous le 10 e degre d’Aquarius que Saturne se 
separait de Venus par quaterne aspect, le 10 e d’Avril, 1492, a 
dix heures du soil* au chateau d’Angoulesme, et fut concue 
l’an 1491 a dix heures avant midi et 17 minutes le 11 de 
Juillet. Les bons astrosites pourroient la dessus en fairc 
quelque composition. Elle mourut en Bearn au mois de 
Decembre, l’an 1549. On pourra la dessus computer son 
age, elle etait plus vieille que le roi son frere, qui nasquit au 
Cognat le 12 de Septembre a neuf heures du soir l’an 1494, 
sous le 21 e degiA de Gemini et avait este concue l’an 1493, 
le dix de Decemhre dix heures du matin, fust roi 11 de Janvier, 
1514, et mourut en 1547. Ceste reine prit sa maladie en re¬ 
gardant une comete qui paroissoit lors sur la mort du pape 
Paul III. et elle mesme le cuidoit ainsi; mais possible pour 
elle paroissoit, &c.” 

Such were, then, the marvellous revelations of the lady’s 
bowers, believed in by the Huguenots equally with their 
fellow T Catholics : for the whole of the Chant of the Henriade , 
appropriated to the witch orgies of the league, is taken wholly 
from De Thou, as matters in which he religiously believed, 
and rigorously condemned to death. It was universal 
in Christendom. The Calvinist James Earl of Moray, 
murdered Sir William Stewart, at that Scottish Rochelle , 
St. Andrews, on the 16th August, 1569; because he had 
fatal evidence of his forgeries, the Calvinist Moray burnt 
him for witchcraft. The Lady of Buccleuch was believed 
to act by magic, and old women were burned at St. Andrews 
especially—where an archbishop was murdered also—as 
offerings to reformation of religion. The Italians were 
obnoxious to the French, as aliens, and we find, in 1380, the 
Duchess of Orleans, a Milanese lady, accused of having be- 


178 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


witched Charles V. of France—as Eleanora Corichini was 
executed for witchcraft after Henri IV.’s death. So Queen 
Catherine was accused—with Ruggieri aDd Retz—solely on 
account of envy and hatred as foreigners. I find, on the 
other hand, no charge of condemnation for witchcraft by 
Queen Catherine: she never appears to have availed herself 
of that Calvinistic weapon, or indeed of any cruelty whatever. 
In England, we have Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, in the 
reign of Henry YI. only banished to the Isle of Man. It 
was the Parliament of Queen Elizabeth, 1563, which passed 
a law against conjurations, enchantments, and witchcraft, and 
it was the Scotch Calvinist clergy that fixed the words 
Malign\nts and Sorcerers, and burnt their political oppo¬ 
nents for witchcraft, as the Regent James had taught them 
the way three-quarters of a century prior. It was the 
Calvinists, not the old faith, which burnt for witchcraft. We 
may seek in vain for any similar acts under the Medici 
queen-mothers. They walked amidst their subjects loving 
and beloved: no assassin’s hand was ever reared against 
them, as they raised no despotic hand against the commons 
on false pleas of sorcery or Levitican law. 

The cruelty of the populace of Paris, and of Scotland and 
Ireland, greatly exceeds anything recorded of the English. 
There were no burning of towns, or raiding of lands, or 
slaughtering armies, in our civil wars. There have never 
been massacres in London—whenever the apprentices or the 
watermen, the democratic elements of London, are adduced 
in history or story, it is always in a generous and giving-of- 
asylum mood. They rescued the victims of the nobles. 
They dug up the dust of Cromwell, but that is a solitary 
case. Whilst in Scotland and Ireland they used fire and 
sword, and murdered with indiscriminate rage. But such 
slaughter has been perennial in France, culminating in 
horrors in Paris, Lyons, and Nantes,—noyades, massacres, 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


179 


guillotines, reigns of terror. Within man’s memory—within 
80 years—we have seen the war of extermination in La Vendee, 
and the Parisians surpass the world in horrors—not yet 
ended. It seems as though the wish and intention of the 
French, from the Jacquerie and through the sieges of Paris, 
was to thin out the population, especially such as had pro¬ 
perty—to seize on the effects of proprietaires, to condemn 
les emigres, and to seize Church lands, have been the moving 
causes of the cruel deeds which, without some such bribe, are 
contrary to nature. 

Amidst the several means of making away young people, 
we find the mania of hydrophobia. A boy attacked was 
seeking his way to the sea, for salt water was a certain cure; 
but passing through a wood the malady seized him, and 
recognizing the fact, he entreated his companions to kill 
him gently, and, it is recorded, they stifled him gently as 
possible. 

A poor girl, who was forced to take poison from her 
husband’s hands, entreated her father not to quit her side: 
“ Car aussitot, mon pere, que vous m’aurez laissee ils 
m’etoufferont.” The cure d’lssy, bit by a mad dog, went 
mad, and died by voluntary famine; and a page who, in lieu 
of rushing to the sea—“sovereign remedy for hydrophobia” 
—went mad, and died very repentant of his sins. 

Equal cruelties existed in punishments by death. Chastel, 
who wounded Henri IV., was racked, ordinary and extra¬ 
ordinary, hand cut off, crowned with red-hot nails, and torn 
in parts by four horses, burnt, and scattered to the winds. 

Sometimes it was in effigy: 1595, July 6th, Charles of 
Lorraine (d’Aumale), executed in effigy for high treason on 
the Place de Greve, torn asunder by four horses. We read 
of him afterwards at the fair of Paris with the king and 
with Nemours, indulging “ in a thousand 'insolences.” We 
have breaking on the wheel, and leaving the victim to die 

n 2 


180 CATHERINE HE MEDICI. 

in torment; burning alive; assommee with clubs; and banging 
and beheading. 

A boy of seventeen hung for theft. Bankrupts were 
hanged—pursuant to reiterated laws of Francis I., 1533, 
Charles IX., Ordinance of Orleans, and Henri II. at Blois— 
whenever deceit and fraud was proved. 

A man was hung on the assumption that he had said he 
was son to the Pope, although he utterly denied the charge. 

A lad of seventeen burned for having engrosse une 
vache; his dicton suppressed on account of the enormity of 
the offence. 

To end with a smaller piece of private murder. One 
Neuilly killed his rival, applicant for an appointment, at 
the St. Bartholomew; and a saint of goodness, Mdlle. la 
Plant, was executed for politique (treason). 

Young girls die off in their teens: one of love, another 
of fright, another of joy, another of loss of a suit. The 
Marquise de Nesle died, at twenty, trop saignee, in child¬ 
birth; and a brother and sister, Fourlevile — she twenty 
and married—executed for adultery. How many more were 
murdered for their possessions, under such false charges, in 
this miserable reign of Henri IV. is impossible to guess. 
There can be no doubt that some Naboth’s vineyard was the 
cause of all these brutal murders, for murders they were, 
one and all. Proceed we to the sports. 

Cards are included by l’Etoile under the head of sorcery 
and scoundrels up to 1610, when the king was playing 
within the sanctuary of the Arsenal. Thus, in 1607, at the 
fair, Miramion dined at the Petit More a 6 ecus par tete, 
and died at the table, playing at la Prime, and with the 
cards in his hand. He had won 700 crowns, and an entry, 
September, 1610, the grand-jouer of cards and dice, ordi¬ 
nary blasphemers of the name of God, died suddenly and 
frightfully. He could not abstain from blasphemy when 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


181 


he lost—which he usually did—when he would give his 
soul to the devil with imprecations on soul and body. 
Having had three cards dealt him, he put them in his hat, 
considering them, with his elbows on the table; and when 
bidden to play, and pushed to urge him to play, he was 
found to be dead.” L’Etoile continues : “ Ciprian writes of 
plays at hazard, a propos to cards, ‘ Hermes, pagan deity, 
invented them, and painted himself thereupon, and ordered 
that such cards should be kissed whilst they sacrificed to 
him. The Christians have simply altered this by placing 
king, queen, and knave, instead of pagan gods. We may 
say, with Ciprian, that such play is the devil’s play, de¬ 
volved from pagan days.” 

“ Tuesday, 24th August, 1593, day of St. Barthlomew, the 
son-in-law of the President de Nulli told me that his father- 
in-law was ill of apprehension of a vision which he had had 
in the night of the late President la Place.” “ To-day died 
in his house, in the suburbs St. Germain, one named Labrosse, 
who was called the philosopher of the queen-mother, be¬ 
cause he had undertaken to foretell things and because 
wherein he meddled he was generally wrong, showing that 
his science was but a pure ignorance, and the profession of 
this doctrine what is called true piperie and imposture.” 

During this month, February, 1594, there were great ru¬ 
mours of a spirit which appeared at St. Innocent’s, where 
all the world went in procession from sunset to 11 o’clock. 
It was heard complaining in the tones of rumbling thunder, 
though the skies were fair. It called his father, his mother, 
and his aunt; said it was needful to slay the politiques 
and reject the Bearnois. This spirit was subsequently dis¬ 
covered, with its body, and its head—which it had in a 
caldron—in a tomb at the Innocents. It being recognised 
as the valet of a cutler, he was quietly imprisoned, because 
of the times and dread of emotion and scandal.” 


182 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


Two very curious points connected with magic are fur¬ 
nished by l’Etoile. He knew Bernard Palissi, and records 
him thus : “ Eighty years old, Bernard Palissi, a Hugue¬ 
not, died of want. This bon homme, dying, gave me a stone 
he called his ‘philosopher’s stone/ and assured me it was 
a human head turned by time to stone, together with another 
which had aided him in his labours (the celebrated pot¬ 
tery.) I keep them in memory of this good man.” . 

On Pere Cotton, the Jesuit. His papers were over¬ 
hauled in 1605, and 71 questions to demons or grimoirs 
were there, “ some very interesting. I have thence extracted 
two passages from Frontinus and St. Thomas, and have 
them still,—formulae against such diablerie, made to counter¬ 
act it.” 

Sometimes the accused of sorcery escaped. The Bishop 
of Boulogne and Mdlle. Montpellier were accused of charms 
and sorceries against the life of the king (1604). They 
were arrested, but only “poulets d'amour ” were found upon 
them, and they were liberated. “Executed in effigy for 
sorcery the wife of a noble who had escaped to Flanders. 
The king applied to the archduke for her, as a subtle sor¬ 
ceress, but the archduke would not give her up.” 

We do not hear of cards until the seventeenth century, 
when Sully is plain enough to inform us of their existence. 
Before that time the games were all athletic,—tennis, run¬ 
ning at the ring, jousting, and masquerading in the streets, 
both in midnight and in penitential processions. We find 
Henri running at the ring in white satin, receiving the 
prize sometimes from Queen Marguerite, and playing at 
tennis before Gabrielle, borrowing money of her to pay his 
losings, and kissing her before all the world, who surnamed 
her Countess d’Ordure and Putaine du Boi. At the jousts the 
challengers dressed as Moors, as savages, as women. The 
fashion spread to Scotland, under Mary Stewart, who is 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


183 


accused of suffering them; but these scenes were not con¬ 
fined to the nobles, the streets appear to have been free 
to any mummery. The Walloons at Paris performed the 
masquerade of the Patience of Job, traversing the streets 
half-clothed in rags, and painted in ulcers and blood, sitting 
backwards on an ass, with the devil on one side and his wife 
on the other deriding him, whilst Job blessed the passers- 
by ; but the Parisians took offence, and Job was with diffi¬ 
culty saved from a ducking in the Seine. 

The Neapolitans gave an entertainment in the form of an 
escarmouche upon the quays : and again, the Neapolitans and 
Spaniards had a sham fight on the quays, saluting the Hotel 
de Nemours. 

At the fairs of Paris and of St. Germain, Chicot, the 
king’s fool, was killed. “De Nemours and d’Aumale in¬ 
dulged in numberless insolences.” At St. Germains, pages, 
laquais, scholars, and soldiers had sham fights, and cut off 
one another’s ears. 

On the never-failing 24th of August, 1605, a solemn pro¬ 
cession of Soeurs Carmelites, J;o take possession of their 
house. The people hurried to get pardons. They marched 
in good order, led by Dr. Deval, with baton in hand; but 
they were dispersed by a mob and fiddle, and rushed into 
their church, chanting the Te Deum. Such, with burnings, 
hangings, assommees, and executions in effigy, in the Place 
de Greve, were scenes in Paris under Henri IV., when every 
one did what seemed to be right in his own eyes and whilst 
Henri played tom-fool. In 1607 the fair lasted three weeks, 
prolonged by the king on account of the pleasure the queen 
found there (poor queen!), she to stroll and he to play. 
Under 23rd February, the king lost 700 crowns at trois 
dez; and he presented the Countess de Moret (de Beuil) 
with a chaplet of 300 crowns. 

The following story of the reign of Charles IX. is given 


184 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


by Brantome. Wishing to see the dexterity of cut-purses 
and the children of their craft, he had a dozen brought to 
the court at a ball and banquet, and bade them ply their 
craft and bring him the booty. A selection was made of 
the cut-purses, who, presented to the king, were judged to 
be brave as the bastard of Lupe. He gave the signal, and 
watched their performances, how they cajoled their homme 
or dame whilst despoiling them. They brought their booty, 
—three thousand crowns in purses and jewels, some their 
jewelled capes, and were left en pourpoint like the valets. 
The king roared with laughter, and left the booty to the 
larcins, warning them that death was their next payment; 
but they all took service under the capitain, and went off as 
soldiers. 

Queen Elizabeth of England gave a ballet, where her maids 
of honour danced as the five wise and five foolish virgins. 
The queen danced with them and the French guests (ii. 367). 

The following occurred in Henri Il.’s reign :—Five ladies 
were carried off from a royal ball by a giant and five cavaliers. 
The ladies were the Princess d’Espinay, Countess of Mans¬ 
field, Countess de Rieux, and Mesdames Bossuand Laousten. 
The next day a fort was attacked in a wood by fifty cavaliers, 
and the five dames were liberated from its dungeons; when 
they divulged that the abductors were their own husbands, 
and this was a mummery. This occurred at the Court of the 
Queen of Hungary. 

Francis II. ran the ring against Nemours; Francis as an 
Egyptian woman—Nemours as a bourgeoise, with a chatelet 
by his side, with 100 keys. 

With the seventeenth century we are introduced to cards, 
which were to be the ruling principle ere the century run out. 
In 1603, Sully being in England, informs us: “I was playing 
at primero with D’Oraison, St. Luc, and Blerancourt, &c.,” 
being his first intimation of cards. In 1609 he entertains 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


185 


the king at the Arsenal. Henri had written to him, “ To¬ 
morrow I come early to Paris, and intend to dine with you; 
provide for twelve, and let us have some fish.” He came 
accordingly, and I gave him a dinner to his taste. The cloth 
removed, I ordered cards and dice to be brought, and laid a 
purse of four thousand pistoles on the table for his Majesty, 
and another, with a like sum, to lend to those accompanying 
him, who, not expecting play, might not have money with 
them. Henri was pleased with this: “ Come hither, grand 
master, and let me embrace you, for I love you, with good 
reason why; I am so agreeably entertained, that I am resolved 
to sup and sleep here. I have reasons for not going to the 
Louvre: order three coaches to take me an airing, after 
which I must discourse with you; admit none hut those I 
send for. The bait, indeed, took so well, that the king 
declared his intention to pass two or three days every month 
so to his mind, and ordered a suite of rooms to he fitted for 
him: nor would he bring his own cooks, but would give me 
a gratuity of six thousand crowns a year for that purpose; 
and this he repeated again at dinner, which dinner and its 
learned scene was succeeded by more cards, dice, and pistoles. 
Immediately after he reproaches the king on his expenses : 
“ 22,000 pistoles lost at play—100,000 livres at one time, 
51,000 at another. He ordered me to take up the latter on 
an office at Rouen, belonging to Queen Marguerite; 1000 
pistoles to another; more to Zamet for buildings; half a 
million livres for pearls for Mile, de Yendome, his daughter; 
3000 to Mile, des Essarts, and 300 livres to her servant.” 
Such was the fruit of the suite of rooms, cooks, and privacy 
at Sully’s, and the gratuity, therefore, of 6000 crowns a year. 

The origin of cards in England is involved in much mist. 
Edward I. is presumed to have known it in the Holy Land; 
but it is generally averred that cards were brought first into 
France to amuse Charles YI. in his craziness. We find the 


186 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


entry in liis accounts: “ Pour trois jeux de cartes d’or et 
diverses couleurs 56 sols de Paris.” This does not impress 
one with the conviction that they were playing-cards, for 
chartes and quartes stand for maps and charts, as well as for 
cards; but I am assured that these were veritable cards, and 
that the knave was called, as in the Morte d’Arthur, Launcelot. 
There was no queen, and the play was symbolical of war— 
the hearts representing courage, the crossed swords muni¬ 
ments of war, the acorns commissariats. There is no entry 
of payments for losses at cards in King Charles YI.’s ac- 
compts, nor did the newly-invented game come into England 
with the infant Queen Isabel; nor can I divest myself of the 
notion that the cards were of the religious and “ mystery ” 
phase, which would have been more in keeping with this 
French king’s intelligences. This would have been about 
a.d. 1400. 

But cards can he distinctly traced from Spain; and from 
Spain we received them, “ with four fair queens, whose 
hands sustain a flower,” which the French cards had 
not then. They probably came to England when Queen 
Katharine was sent to wed Arthur; and it is recorded 
in Leland, that when Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., 
was sent to Scotland to be wedded to James IV., that she 
played cards with him on her arrival at Edinburgh, which I 
interpret to signify, she first showed him the new Spanish 
game. It is likewise on record that the Spaniards played 
cards in Mexico. The game was called Primero, to which 
were added Piquette and Ombre in a sequent age, as we read 
in the ‘ Rape of the Lock,’ with Spanish attributes. Hombre 
is the man, and Piquette the little axe; Spadillio, Manillio, 
and the matadores, being all redolent of Spain. 

As this is a history of Parisian deeds, it behoves to take 
France first, where cards were held in great abomination up 
to 1600. L’Etoile duly tells us of rogues hanged for card- 


CATHEEINE DE MEDICI. 


187 


playing; of one who was found dead in his seat, the cards in 
his hat in his hand; and another case, in 1604, where the 
card-players were arrested and tried as blasphemers, and 
were hanged. 

Neither do we find Henri IV. played at cards before about 
1600. His games were trois dez, tennis, and riding at the 
ring, at all which he won money, as was his wont. We find 
him playing with Catherine of Lorraine, Duchess of Mont- 
pensier, “ au sens,” which I imagine means a Sens— i. e. the 
Hotel de Sens, where she resided, for there was no game 
called sens. The earliest game there was called Prime, con¬ 
fused with Primero, but it was different, and must have 
resembled our game of commerce, for it was played with 
three cards, as these lines on the Duke of Guise prove:— 

“ Sa fortune a jouant le Guizard bien traite, 

Car ayant un valet et un roy ecarte, 

Une et une autre reine en sa main retenue 
(0 trois fois heureux), prime lui est venue.” 

Guise held king, queen, and knave, or, as we say, sequents; 
he threw away king and knave and took up queens, and held 
prime. This is our game of Commerce, and different from 
Primero, on which the cards were counted, as Mr. Earle, in 
his ‘ Microcosmographia,’ 1628, writes, “His wordes are like 
the cardes at primuiste, which never signify what they sound, 
where 6 is 18 and 7 21.” 

We find Henry VIII. played at cards at Calais in 1532 
by an entry: “ Item, paid to the ladye Marquis of Pem¬ 
broke, for that his king’s grace lost to her at cardes, xvs.”— 
Chronicles of Calais. This was a reflex of the Spaniard in 
England, not France. After this we find cards constantly 
mentioned, but only indefinitely and conjoined with dicing. 
Lyly, in his ‘Euphues,’ 1579, writes of Lucilla and Livia at 
Naples “ as being neither idle nor well employed, but playing 


188 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


at cardes” (p. 69); and again the Ladye Flavia (p. 401) 
said: “ To play at cardes is common, cheste tedious, dice 
unseemly, Christmas games untimely.” By the word common 
the Lady Flavia means, like St. Paul, common and unclean, 
vulgar and unmeet, conjoined, indeed, to sorcery, with which 
they conjoined them in French theory. Euphues sent a 
letter to Philautes, which he called a cooling card, and re¬ 
alluded to it as cooling; and again, “ wit having tolde all his 
cardes, lacked many an ace of wisdom.” Stephen Gosson, 
1579, writes : “ Dicers and carders, because their abuses are 
so commonly cried on, neede no discourse, for every manne 
seethe them, and they stinke almost in every manne’s nose.” 
Sir Philip Sidney, in his ‘ Apologie,’ whenever he treats of 
amusements, 1595, does not mention cards. 

Roger Ascham, as early as 1545, in the ‘ Toxophilus,’ 
says “ that shooters equally blamed cardes and dyce. One 
present defended playing at cardes and dyce, if honestly 
used; for a toxophilite might shoot away all his substance, 
whilst a paire of cardes cost only twopence, and needed no 
reparation, as did bowes, neither did shooting wide at cardes, 
slay another man.” There were games for every capacity. 
Again Ascham declares “ dicing and carding to be dishonest 
and shameful occupations—that Theuth, an ungracious god, 
invented dice, whom Homer despises to mention, but Plato, 
in ‘ Phaedo,’ names him.” Generally, when Ascham particu¬ 
larises, it is on dice, and cards are only added nominally, 
save in the paire of cards costing only twopence, differing 
much from the 50 sols of Paris in the accounts of Charles YI. 
We find the same history of cards and Hermes in ‘l’Etoile,’ 
in 1609. 

In the confession of Ruthven (1568), Darnley is made to 
say of the Queen of Scots, “ that she was at the cardes with 
Rizzio;” but this is a positive blunder of our own. The 
word is cordes— i.e. chords—singing with her maidens and 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


189 


matrons. Even so we blundered with Pitt’s last dying words. 
Queen Mary never played cards, nor were cards then in 
vogue at Paris, but were held as disgraceful. Then there 
is a picture which once belonged to Lord Falkland, which 
represented Queen Elizabeth, Lord Burleigh, Walsingham, 
and the first Lord North, playing at cards. I should imagine 
this to be a caricature of the quatuor reges, chousing one 
another. If Queen Elizabeth had ever played at cards, we 
should have known the fact through many a source. 

In the seventeenth century the mention of cards grows 
common, and in the eighteenth culminated under the Georges. 
In the reign of James I. the apprentices are said to have 
played cards in the pit of the theatre between the acts; but 
this was probably only cutting for the highest, instead of 
pitch and toss. Henri Quatre is mentioned as playing 
reversis in 1609, which surely is head or tails—the head or 
ship of the Romans. 

There are several parallels of persons during this era in 
France and England provoking comment: 

Queen Elizabeth and Henri IY. 

Burleigh and Sully. 

Biron and Essex. 

Buchanan and Theodore de Beze. 

L’Etoile and Evelyn. 

The difference between the two first is set forth in an essay,, 
by Elia, of the grandeur of the borrower and the humility 
of the lender. Queen Elizabeth was the latter, Henry the 
former. Mentally Henri was more generous than his con¬ 
temporary queen, but in external decencies both were de¬ 
ficient. Their two ministers were both working machines, 
following their instincts and natures, to which they were as 
fixed as good steam-engines to a Cornish mine to-day. Bur¬ 
leigh was far superior to Sully as a man, but he did not 
write a book or leave us his memoirs, divulging his inner 


190 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


soul, as did Sully; but our Cecil was greatly his superior in 
honour and duty. 

We may class together the murders of Surrey by Henry 
VIII., Essex by Queen Elizabeth, and Biron by Henri IV. 
“ Ye ruthless jealous tyrants.” Henry VIII. and his victim 
died together. Queen Elizabeth, they say, pined for Essex, 
and shook the old Countess of Salisbury in her dying bed. 
Biron, Henri IV.’s best and firmest friend, was miserably 
betrayed to the jealous tyrant. There is an old monkish 
legend of a soldier who leapt the sacred enclosure of St. 
Bridget, and blew out the holy fire. The divine wrath which 
fell on him made him idiotic, and he roamed about, repeating 
“I blew out St. Bridget’s fire.” Henri IV., having slain 
Biron, repeated thenceforth as his oath, deposing his Ventre 
St. Gris , for “ as sure as Biron was a traitor,” probably he 
would say now, “ as sure as Sully saved himself.” Buchanan 
and De Beze copied one another’s scandalous productions, 
which were rechauffees, for all in turn—Queens Elizabeth and 
Catherine, Jeanne and Mary—had the benefit of its author¬ 
ship : 

“ Thus even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice 
To our own lips.” 

So He Thou (mein ami) and L’Etoile wrote epigrams which 
may be seen in the latter in 1608 and 1609, which are as 
dull as they are dirty—“ loves of a girl and old man ” being 
the pretty subjects for the pen of the President. Most of 
the current epigrams I believe to be those of L’Etoile him¬ 
self, who, on the 14th December, 1606, “consigned to M. 
Despinelle my folio journal, writ in my own hand, of memo¬ 
rable occurrences, good and bad, where truth and libel stand 
pell mell; from which I have made a selection for one volume 
for myself alone and not for another. There I hold the 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


191 


poetries of the Court, current fitted to amuse the idle, curious, 
and scandalous, like those of to-day, and amongst others, 

‘ Le combat de TAmour et du Repos ’ of Malherbe, and the 
reply of Berthelot, and three or four more medizances.” 
Under the head of “ Paulo quinto vice Deo,” 666, number of 
the Beast, he adds: “ It has given me pleasure to extract 
‘ ces fadezes et medizances des Seize/ in which one can 
nevertheless discern facts of our present time.” 

It is but just to L’Etoile to record that he often reiterates 
the worthless nature of the anecdotes and rumours which he 
records, and, as rumours, we may thank him for the infor¬ 
mation of the straws which show the set of the wind. He 
very honestly repeats that they are pure fadezes and medi¬ 
zances ; some he declines to repeat, some, as the one volume 
he retains for himself and sein ami De Thou, he withdraws 
from his gros-tome in folio; whilst, on the other hand, he 
gives us a great deal of matter upon medals and money; the 
metallic values of the coins and the comparative value of 
the money being subjects of importance; whilst a review 
of his own domicile, as given by himself, is very instructive. 
“ Wednesday 9th December, 1592, on rising from dinner, 
and warming myself at the fire, I was nearly killed by the 
falling of two large piastres which fell from the chimney, 
from beneath which my children, by God’s will, had just 
gone. Quitting the spot, and retreating to the middle of the 
room, the board plank gave way beneath me, and I fell into 
the hole up to my middle, God lending me a hand, as I 
believe, that I should escape unwounded; and the next day, 
in the same room, I fell into the same hole, and lost an 
antique piece of silver of Marius, which I greatly esteemed, 
and that I held in my hand, which I never again could find 
or recover, despite a diligent search, no more than though it 
had fallen into the abyss. God then preserved me a second 
time,” vol. ii., p. 304. In this inconceivable domestic 


192 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


piggery Evelyn differs wholly from his parallel. He was 
point-device in his house and gardens; although in medals, 
monsters, and medizance, he was fully the equal of his 
Parisian predecessor: they both believed in the faultlessness 
of their own households, and the virtue of their own imme¬ 
diate friends, as stoutly as they believed the world was 
coming to an end through the corruption infecting the 
Court, round which they roam and dream somewhat like 
Mr. Pepys in the Mall, staring open-mouthed at the white 
chemises of Lady Castlemaine hanging to dry,— 

“ And whence the egregious wizard could foredoom 
The fate of Louis and the fall of Rome.” 

The end of these Puritans, in their own self-esteem, is by 
no means enviable. “This year, 1609, critique de mon age 
has been unhappy for me and mine, afflicted with divers 
maladies of body and soul; bad fortune in losses, new and 
unexpected ; troubled in matters and law ; rejected by my 
neighbours, despised and troubled by all, even to the 
faquins, valets, and chambrieres. Ah! is there, I ask, in 
the world aught more miserable than an infirm and neces¬ 
sitous old age ? I was even on the point of the proof, if 
Thou, my God, had not by thy goodness turned away the 
blow. If I had not, in reliance on my means, kept a secret 
store, I should have perished and left my family destitute. 

. . . but I have ever had something in reserve, more than 
others deemed, always speaking, I confess it, falsely of my 
money: and my conscience is free upon that score, that I 
never let the truth of what I possessed be known, which 
Montagne, in his essays, calls a ridiculous and bashful 
prudence. ... I say, with St. Augustin, “ Put your trust in 
God, 0 my soul.” ... I am constrained to draw upon my 
funds 300 crowns owed me by Gastines, the remnant of 
800 which I have consumed in the last 18 months, and 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


193 


now no more remains of that fund.” And, whilst the 
memorialist of the reign of Henri IV. so chronicles his own 
end, he chronicles the last days of his king whose Bible, 
he says, was the Amadis de Gaul, thus: No response of 
God save the King followed as they scattered the royal 
bounty in the streets; and when the king was assassinated, 
two children, one a hoy of 14, was condemned to die for 
wishing to kill the king (Louis XIII.) and queen. In the 
next page the daughter of a washerwoman equally aspired in 
wish to be a regicide: apres cela, says the writer: apres 
cela, a Jesuit asks for les heures to see what Saint held 
Friday the 14tli May, whereon the king was killed. It 
was St. Boniface. “ Yoila mes amis, this Saint is ever pro¬ 
pitious ; ” such are the remarks accompanying the deaths of 
King Henri and L’Etoile his contemporary memorialist. 

Beaumont, our dramatist, in 1611, wrote the Maid’s 
Tragedy, the second version of which was licensed 31st 
October, 1611. Probably he was desired to veil his characters, 
for that the maid Evadne is Henriette d’Entragues, who was 
then upon her trial for the murder of Henri IV., and Amintor 
was the affianced Bellegarde; that Melanthus and Diphilus, 
brothers, were the rebels Auvergne and d’Entragues; and 
that the king is Henri there cannot be a doubt. The 
aesthetics are worked out in that play, which is framed to a 
pure and simple plot without any bye-play, after true 
Stagirite rules. Beaumont has taken the incidents of Henri’s 
reign and used them to his purposes; thus he has taken the 
murder of Henri III. and the bequest of the realm to 
Henri IV. for the catastrophe of the king and succession of 
his brother Lysyppus. As Gabrielle was wedded to Lian- 
court, so Evadne is formally wedded to Amintor; and as 
Henriette was torn from Bellegarde, so she has been torn 
from Amintor, both of whom, real and dramatic, accept the 
position and obtain the government of Bourgogne from the 


194 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


king: whilst in the drama, the Nemesis of wronged love 
seizes on Evadne, until she murders the king; and after the 
imperative demand for deaths at that period on the stage, 
the king, the lover-husband, and the mistress, all duly die 
upon the stage by murder and suicide. It is very evident 
that Beaumont believed that Henriette was the instigator 
to the murder, the peculiar features of which are such that 
they may justify a belief that Ravaillac stabbed Henri IV. 
by connivance of those with him in the coach, and of which 
he appears to have had a second-sight assurance himself. 
In the Maid’s Tragedy I see the reflex of the popular mind 
on Henri’s murder, and can well believe there were political 
qualms to forbid its appearance on the stage. It is likewise 
evident that the king was a married man, which constituted 
the insuperable bar to his wedding Evadne. 


CONCLUSION. 

There is an error in p. 155, wherein it is stated that the 
fall of Rochelle in 1528 was the final fate of that town, and 
that Richelieu had consolidated the jarring elements of 
French nationality. The year 1651 saw another queen- 
mother Regent, another minor king, Louis the XIV.; 
another imprisonment and pardon of a Conde, Conti, and 
Longueville; another hiring of Swiss, compact with the 
Spaniards, and tampering with Oliver Cromwell against 
their own country. Again was Rochelle besieged by the 
Count of Harcourt, but it surrendered in three days, given 
up by the Swiss garrison. This was part of the war of the 
Fronde, when Calvinist fought Calvinist. Turenne fought 
Conde, when Turenne fought for the king, or against him, 



CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 195 

according as the Duchess of Longueville smiled or frowned 
on him:— 

“ Pour meriter son coeur et pour plaire a ses beaux yeux, 
J’ai fait la guerre aux rois, je l’aurais faite aux dieux.” 

but as the duchess flouted him, he fought for his king. 
Thus France resolved itself into its elements until Louis XIY. 
uttered the celebrated dictum , “ L’etat, c’est moi,” and con¬ 
joined France in the series of victories which culminated 
with the treaty of Nimeguen in 1678. It was in 1685 that, 
striving for that utopia which all nations have sighed in 
vain to acquire, namely, uniformity of religious worship, 
Louis revoked the edict, and strove to reduce his realm to 
uniformity of worship. We simultaneously passed laws more 
severe, more arbitrary, more intolerant. After having ejected 
James II., the English Protestants cried against his declara¬ 
tion of indulgence to his co-religionists, numbering, ac¬ 
cording to Hume, one in a hundred of the population, which 
indulgence extended also to Presbyterians. We, in the reign 
of William III., passed the Act to prevent the further 
growth of popery, which carried penalties and disabilities to 
the utmost height: for a foreign popish priest to officiate 
was felony; for a native priest, high treason. Catholics 
were denied the right to hold lands; a Protestant son could 
eject a Catholic father: nor was this Act repealed until 
1778, under Lord North’s administration. Thus we rowed 
in the same boat, and we pulled a stronger oar than did the 
French; but the results to the two countries were strangely 
diverse. We are not aware of having suffered any national 
loss by our intolerance, whilst half a million of colonists 
left France, and their loss was sorely felt. Still it does not 
appear that any deep religious feeling had aught to do with 
that exodus; they were not persecuted in France as the 
Eomanist was persecuted in England. Conde and Turenne, 


196 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


their co-religionists, were at the head of the armies, but 
they were too deeply compromised, perhaps, to live safely at 
home; or, what rather appears to be the case, the bidding of 
foreign countries for them acted as a sufficient cause for 
them to quit France and go to the Rhine, Brandenburg, 
Saxony, Switzerland, and, above all, England, in none of 
which countries did they long show any great predilection 
for Calvinistic tenets, but adopted the Lutheran of Germany, 
and the established Protestantism of Britain of their own 
accord. To look at the matter with the eye of Lord Palmer¬ 
ston, the Huguenots in France were matter in a wrong place. 
They fall into their right place in England, where, accord¬ 
ing to Mr. Smiles, their eulogist, they have been a sort of 
superior race falling upon their feet, and now predominant 
in many a noble and wealthy house. Although they would 
not conform to Popery, they had no great care for Calvinism 
when it stood in their way on this side of the water. Indeed, 
religious sects seem to be more alive to the faults of their 
rivals, and prompt to rail at their errors, than to be well 
aware of the virtues of their own; and yet it is much to be 
doubted whether uniformity of religion would not sink into 
torpidity, whether sectism is not like the healthy flow and 
ebb of the tide, and the purifying actions of lightnings 
and winds. The Romans boast of their uniformity, and we 
look with wonderment upon their slothful indifference and 
lack of spiritual feeling, sunk in fasts and feasts, penance, 
\\ and purchased absolution. 

If yet a long and lingering wish exist to uphold, as Pro¬ 
testants, the Calvinist rebels against the orthodox Catholics 
of France, I must again adduce Sully, rolling in riches, and 
unable to calculate his wealth, who writes: “ To these sums 
I must add those which arose from the sale of my benefices, 
for I thought it was equally allowable for me to take money 
for them, as for the ecclesiastics, by whom they were pur- 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


197 


chased, to give it me ; or for the Pope to permit it, as he did, 
by his bulls. I therefore took, without making any scruples, 
an allowance of 80,000 livres of an abbe, who was recom¬ 
mended to me by the Prince of Conde, for my abbey of 
Coulon. Bethune, who as well as his son, was the most 
scrupulous Roman Catholic I ever knew, purchased under 
the sanction of these bulls the abbey of Jard of me for 
40,000 livres. An abbe, a friend of the Duke of Rohan, 
bought that of D’Or at Poitiers of me for 70,000; and the 
silversmith Yancemain, or rather his son, that of L’Absie for 
50,000 livres. All these sums together make a total,” &c. 
So did Sully alienate his reformed benefices and sell them to 
the Roman Catholics, excusing himself by the example of the 
Pope. 

It is gross hypocrisy to rail against Louis XIY. for the 
revocation of the edict of Nantes, and to shut our eyes to 
its contemporary felony, high treason, and incapacity to hold 
land by Catholics in England; it is hypocrisy to ignore the 
nine months’ sack of Rome by German Lutherans, and cry 
out daily and hourly against the one night of the St. Bar¬ 
tholomew of Paris, although that was the retaliation on the 
St. Bartholomew of Pau. It is sheer absurdity to shut our 
eyes to the brutality and filth of the execution of Babington 
and his fellow sufferers, and rail at the contemporary inqui¬ 
sitions. If the student will take Prescott’s c Philip II. of 
Spain ’ and read the auto da fe which he attended at Yalla- 
dolid, he will find as much mercy as was compatible with 
the fact that sixteen were to be burnt, of whom the king by 
personal argument and entreaty caused fourteen to recant 
and accept pardons, and only two, described as obstinate old 
barons, who preferred to revile their monarch to his face 
than to accept his pardon or his grace, and went up to the 
stake in a delirium of presumptuous pride. 


198 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


We must take the Calvinists of France for what they were, 
rebels against their king and (jueen-mothers equally in 

1562, against King Charles and Catherine de Medici; 

1612, against Louis XIII. and Marie de Medici; 

1651, against Louis XIV. and Anne of Austria. 

It is hardly needful to repeat the history, which duplicates 
and triplicates itself, and where religion made no bond of 
union when the battle was for plunder, and for dominion, 
and where the morality and self-respect of the Calvinists 
were infinitely below their orthodox adversaries. 

I make these remarks in complaint—in loud complaint 
against the partizanship of historians who see no medium 
between demi-gods and demi-devils: it is as laughable to 
see the first position seriously upheld as it is wearying to find 
the second constantly intruded. I would make one final 
extract, from a speech of Lamartine’s on the proposed 
regency of the present Duchess of Orleans, apropos to 
Salique law, spoken in 1848:—“The Salique law, which 
excludes women, has so little influenced regencies, that out 
of thirty-two regencies which we have had, no less than 
twenty-six have been those of women. The Salique law 
has never been able to prevail against the law of God 
and of nature, which says that a mother can have no other 
interest than that of her son, and that she is his natural 
guardian.” 

We may well question whether that law has not been very 
detrimental to France, especially as it was the sole legal 
female disability; but at any rate we may ask when in her 
history has that law been beneficial; or, indeed, whether it 
has not been the fertile source of much of the political 
trouble which appears to be inherent to the French throne. 

To sum up the case against Queen Catherine de Medici in 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


199 


a judicial manner, there is no specific charge, save the 
massacre of 24th August, 1572, of any wrong brought 
against her. The charges are all general and vague, of 
which the greatest is that she cast division and jealousies 
broadcast through the land. The history, on the contrary, 
for thirty years shows her constantly employed in making 
peace and allaying dissensions. When she was forced from 
the Bourbons on to the Guises, she was the party coerced. 
Much of the evil which accrued to France emanated from 
the jealousies of the Yalois kings against the House of Guise, 
and not without some cause, although disloyalty to the throne 
or the realm was never attributable to their house or race. 
Francis I. was the author of this epigram— 
u Le roi Francis ne faillit point 
Quant il predit que ceux de Guise 
Mettroient ses enfans en pourpoint 
Et tous ses sujets en chemise.” 

That jest bore hitter fruits in its action. It appears to have 
rung on the ears of every king, from King Francis I. to 
Louis XIII., when the consolidation of France was effected 
by Bichelieu. Nor, save in the matter of the League, were 
the Guises ever ranged against the king. 

The charge of “ divide and rule ” belongs pre-eminently 
to Queen Elizabeth, who upheld all in their utmost need, 
and succoured kings against their rebels and rebels against 
their kings. 

For the charges of sorcery, magic, and poison, they 
utterly fail; in no single instance, worthy of notice, is there 
mention made of such arms as resorted to by her; whilst the 
contrary plea of a charmed and charming Court of Sirens is 
equally destitute of any proof. The evidence is wholly to 
the contrary, and Calvinistic ladies presided over her Court 
the short period of her being queen or regent. 

Her subjects called her “ la bonne reine mere, who made 


200 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


the peaceand we see her travel unescorted through the 
barricades of Paris and through the departments of France; 
nor was there ever the fear or the attempt at assassination. 

With regard to the murder of Coligni. We know that 
she sat in conclave on the night of the 22nd-23rd with the 
two brothers-in-law Guise and De Nevers, with her old 
counsellors Tavannes and Birague, both of whom were in the 
last stage of life. Tavannes died in the ensuing year, and 
Birague retired with his cardinal’s hat. We have accounts 
by Queen Margaret and by Anjou which disagree ; and young 
Tavannes repudiates the trump of fame in respect of his dead 
sire. Anjou says that he was present; I do not believe it— 
his ignorance on what had been resolved and his receiving 
commands from the conclave as to his actions, shows that 
Anjou chose to magnify the part which he took and its 
importance: those wary heads we see in conclave were not 
likely to admit a most rash and untrusty boy. I have a 
strong feeling that Guise and Nevers were entreated not to 
slay the admiral, and that they refused; but that they then 
intended that that murder should be the beginning and the 
end of the revenge. As young Tavannes most justly says: 
“ Had the massacre been premeditated, it would most as¬ 
suredly have failed; its utter unpremeditation was the main 
cause of its success, for the Huguenots were in Paris in over¬ 
whelming force.” There is nothing to conjoin the Queen- 
Mother with the murder of Coligni, save sitting in conclave 
on the 22nd of August; and whether she urged or dis¬ 
countenanced the matter we really know not, since those 
present (excepting Anjou) have not opened their lips upon 
what then took place. 

This is the sole specific charge made against the Queen- 
Mother, and assuredly it is non proven; whilst the exaggera¬ 
tions in which we have indulged on that St. Bartholomew 
have put truth and modesty to silence. 


CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 


201 


I find that Queen Elizabeth received La Motte Fenelon in 
mourning, and that it was court mourning for the late decease 
at Paris of Queen Jeanne of Navarre, as the court was 
bound then to be in black; whilst Queen Elizabeth then 
agreed to be godmother to the daughter of Charles IX., and 
also accepted the presents and addresses of her “frog,” 
Anjou. 

I find that the presence of the Count of Montgomery in 
the train of the Huguenots was an outrageous scandal; that 
young Tavannes smote him a blow in the king’s presence, 
for which he was to have fought him in Italy thereafter, but 
the flight of the 24th, and his execution of the sequent year 
intervened. Montgomery had defended Bouen against the 
royalists, and fought against them in Navarre and in Flanders, 
and was excluded by name from capitulation as a traitor, 
with which matters the Queen-mother had nothing whatever 
to do; and, in fine, I find that Queen Catherine has been 
defamed, in order to cover some of the glaring defects of the 
house of Bourbon and Henri IY. Of Queen Catherine there 
remains neither life nor medal; those vanities were reserved 
and showered on the successor to her children. 


r 




( 202 ) 


APPENDIX. 


The iconoclasts supplied and filled the void of the destroyed 
images and pictures by medals and mottoes. The Romanist 
objected to the Calvinist, that it was illogical to destroy the 
monuments, and then to cast in alto relievo , and in all its 
ugliness , the head of Calvin, and to hang that on their walls 
and round their necks. The following are some of such 
medals with their mottoes:— 

The Gueux’s (beggars’) penny in Flanders; 

Motto : “ Fideles au roi jusqu’ a porter la besace.” 

A second Gueux in Flanders :— 

“ Par flamme et par fer.” 

The teston of Rochelle, to commemorate the death of 
Henri II.:—H., and the lance head. 

Another, in derision of Charles IX.:— 

T., 1773. Morvens. 

Charles IX., St. Bartholomew:— 

“ Pietas excitavit justitiam.” 

Pope Gregory XIII.:— 

“Ugunotorum strages, 1572.” 

Prince of Conde :— 

“ Pax certa, victoria integra, mors honesta.” 

Queen Jeanne of Navarre:— 

“Numina freta, licet rumpere, infracta manebo.” 

Queen Jeanne of Navarre :— 

“ Paix assuree, victoire entiere ou mort honnete.” 

Annual medals of Sully to Henri IY.:— 

“ Hi fines,—two polar stars.” 

“ Suo se pondere fulcit.” 

“ iEquitate non aculeo,” 



( 203 ) 

and the temple of Janus, closed by a lily. 
“ Clausi cavete recludam.” 

Diana of Poitiers :— 

“ Omnium victorem vici.” 


Amidst the collection by Petitot, there are two passages 
upon our two contemporary queens as they were seen in 
catholic eyes. Castlenau, whom we term M. de Mauvissiere, 
the early and latest friend of Queen Mary Stewart, a man of 
the greatest probity, and whom she addressed from Chartley 
to learn who Phillips was, who was there forging the beer- 
barrel letters, thus draws her character when he visited her 
in Scotland, and records her praise in these terms to his son: 
“ Esteemed and adored by her subjects; courted by her 
neighbours to the extent that there was nothing to which 
she might not aspire; relative and heiress presumptive to 
England, and surely with graces and perfections exceeding 
all others of her time.” — ‘ Petitot,’ vol. xxxiii. p. 345. 
Tavannes the younger, recording the carelessness of Henri 
IY. for his family, makes these reflexions: “ plus de croix 
plus de salut; the more tribulation, the more salvation. 
Elizabeth of England, born in a double adultery, heretic, 
cruel, refuge of rebels, cause of the death of a million souls, 
lived happily and died in her bed : cela met en doute le 
chemin de son ame.”—Yol. xxxv. p. 375. 


LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, 
AND CHARING CROSS. 







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MOV 16 1900 

































































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